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Beginning in the mid 1980s the practices of Soviet youth became a scene of heightened academic interest as western scholars eagerly turned their attention to the changing ???subcultural??? realities of youth in the wake of the relaxations introduced under Perestroika and Glasnost. Unfortunately, despite this growing interest, the Russian punk community has remained, predominantly on the periphery of scholarly inquiry. One can surmise, however, that a dominant reason for this has been the over-reliance on New Subcultural Theory, which marks many of these studies and which seeks to understand ???subcultures??? in terms of their homogeneous values and symbolic resistance to a socio-structural Other within a rigid and vertical cultural model. This paradigm, when coupled with prominent western themes exhibited in the behaviour of Russian punks, has led to a somewhat anomalous understanding of this group???s existence and has championed the apparent drive within the academy to discredit both the punk community and its membership as little more than cultural mimics. By drawing on data collected from a Russian punk internet forum located at http://offtop.ru/punkforum, this exploratory grounded theory study investigates (1) how the community exists as a discursive space (2) how individual participants construct and put forward their self-presentation and, (3) to what extent may we consider that these presentations of self both construct, and are constructed by the community? The overall concern of the study is to consider whether a conceptual break from the notion of ???subculture??? permits a fuller understanding of how individual members??? identities are both constructed by, and construct this particular punk community. The findings suggest that while members exhibit some general commonalities, there is significant diversity among them as well. A key finding is how members become ???authentic??? in relation to the punk idea, while taking part in the construction of that idea and the group as a whole. This presents a significant departure from the notion of ???subculture??? and from common-place ideas about punk, namely that being punk involves little more than a style of dress and behaviours. Thus, this exploratory study implies that this Russian punk community is a dynamic discursive space within which identity must continuously be negotiated and renegotiated through language.

The main aim of this project is to explore the construction of national identity as performed by members of the Russian-speaking communities living in Scotland through the analysis of intergenerational narratives and conversations between parents and their children appearing in families in everyday situations. The subject of the research is the Russian community living in Scotland. This thesis aims to answer the following questions: How do Russian migrants construct and re-construct their Russianness during the constant process of interpretation of the new reality, new country, new culture. In what way do they attempt to exhibit their Russianness to their children in the process of everyday interaction? How do the children respond to these attempts and how do they contribute and co-construct the creation of identity? Which linguistic means and strategies are used to display and pass on the elements of the identity constructed? Are there any patterns used by adults in identity creations or any likely systematic actions undertaken during the identity performances? Do the adults achieve their intended aims, if they have any? The methodological framework of the thesis exploits Foucault’s, Goffman’s and Blumer’s theories in which the identity is seen as a discursive phenomenon created and shaped by interactions appearing in everyday situations. The empirical data are analysed using Bucholtz and Hall’s sociocultural linguistic approach which enables the embedding of the study of interaction in a broader ethnographic context. Moreover, in the analytical part of the thesis the Conversational Analysis, Narrative Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis are employed.

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