This volume explores the relation between identity and diversity as the essential condition of interculturalism and the sometimes positive sometimes negative role that identity and diversity play within intercultural dialogue in an increasingly globalised world. An international conference in Madrid October 2003 brought together scholars from four continents and allowed them to share their knowledge and learn about the issues of identity and diversity philological and philosophical reflections. The present volume contains a selection of the conference papers. The contributors explore the dynamics of identity as a process open to differences. Although identity and difference are not exclusively discursive it is discourse and natural language that incorporate them.