Il concetto di identità nei Paesi di lingua tedesca

Abstract

This special issue aims to offer an overview of the concept of identity from a linguistic and literary perspective, observing its declinations and representations in German-speaking countries. In order to give a multifaceted image, it is divided into five sections. The first section (contributions by Ferron, Longhi and Russo) is dedicated to the forms of identity self-representation from pragmatic (identity and political linguistics) and specialized (corporate language and medical language) perspectives. The second section (contributions by Schlicht, Centorbi, Gangemi) focuses on the relationship between identity and the revision of subjectivity, thus developing the reflection around the representative modalities of identity starting from the ideas of both splitting and reformulation. The third section (contributions by Coppola, Paoli, Occhini) analyzes the crisis of the category ‘identity’, focusing on the inconsistency of a single concept for delineating such a complex and multi-layered phenomenon. The fourth section (contributions by Cosentino, Polizio and Sgambati) investigates identity as a reference paradigm in the sociolinguistic and didactic field, paying attention to the interactional nature of the concept. The fifth and last section (contributions by Di Noi, Vangi and Sommadossi) centres the literary construction of identity analyzed through an incursion into the conceptual worlds of collective memory and archives.  The multiplicity of approaches and the fruitful exchange between different cognitive universes produces the idea that identity is, in the end, the product of a continuous conceptual negotiation, whether it is put at the centre of a linguistic reflection or whether it becomes the object of literary or culturological investigations.