Authors

Discussion

Drawing on the unusual combination of Stuart Hall’s definition of cultural identity and on genre studies, the paper makes parallels between identity and the text, and between identity characteristics, such as ethnicity, and ‘genre’ because both, genre and ethnicity, are used as sorting categories. These parallels are inspired by Jacque Derrida’s assertion in The Law of Genre (1980) that texts do not belong to genres but ‘participate’ in them. In the same way, the paper agues that individuals do not belong to ethnicities but ‘participate’ in them. By analysing the representation of identity and diversity in the works by Guzel Yakihina, Alisa Ganieva and Khamid Ismailov, the paper deconstructs the relationship between identity and ethnicity as well as between individuals and their native languages. The paper also takes this parallel further to consider how contemporary genre studies — where genre is seen ‘as social acton’ *(Carolyn Miler 1984) — could be used to de-essentialilse and diversify our approaches to understanding ethnic and linguistic identity.