Language and Belonging

The book deals with the relationship between speakers' sense of belonging and their language use by examining their interactions in a Guatemalan community. The analysis shows that belonging is tied to the use of social, spatial and temporal categories, the relations between them, and collectively shared linguistic practices.

In this book, the author introduces belonging from a sociolinguistic perspective as a concept that is accomplished in interaction. Belonging can be expressed linguistically in social, spatial and temporal categories - indexing rootedness, groupness and cohesion. It can also be captured through shared linguistic practices within a group, e. g. collectively shared narrative practices. Using conversation analysis and an analysis of narrative as practice bolstered with ethnographic knowledge, the author shows how belonging is tied to locally contextualized use of deictics and to collectively shared narrations of the past in a Guatemalan community. The book examines the understudied phenomenon of belonging at the intersection of pragmatics and linguistic anthropology.