Seeking of Identity and Ontological Security in a Multilingual Context in Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive

ABSTRACT

Language and identity are intricately interconnected. The connection between identity and language has gained attention in the recent decades and researches in the field of socioliguistics, applied linguistics, sociology of language and social psychology of language have revealed that ethnolinguistic vitality, social standing, power, gender, control and ideological concerns have deep impact on an individual’s identity. Placing identity within social action confirms the assumption that identity is fluid and the individual is able to move in and out of identity categories by varying their acts in response to needs within particular moments of identification. It recognises multiple positioning and multiple selves. This paper looks into Holocaust child-survivor Ruth Kluger’s negotiation of identities and search of  ontological security in a multi-lingual context as revealed through her memoir, Still Alive.

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