The relationship between language and identity is a topic of major interest in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, psychology, applied linguistics, and education. Identity can be approached in a number of ways, from individual projections (such as the use of attribution labels or self‐identifiers) to more “primordial” characteristics (such as those involving gender, race, or ethnicity). Contemporary work has shown that, however it is revealed or indexed linguistically, “identity” is a complicated process – socially co‐constructed, sometimes contradictory and ever‐changing.

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John J. Gumperz (1922–2013) was an American linguist whose work on speech and social groups greatly influenced sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and discourse analysis. After returning from fieldwork in India, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he remained until his death. With Dell Hymes, he developed a discourse analytic method drawing on ethnography for analyzing communication that considers the communicative form and function within a given cultural context or speech community. Gumperz's own contribution to linguistics includes a refined method for the analysis of social interactions, known as interactional sociolinguistics, underscoring the meaning making process between language users in social interactions. In addition to the methodological import of his work, he contributed to the understanding of speech communities, especially language and power. For instance, he made a distinction between a so‐called standard variety and their speakers, seen as the more prestigious form of a language, contrasted with diglossic speakers who were users of marginalized varieties in addition to the more prestigious standard variety.