This book examines how urban adolescents attending a non-mainstream learning centre in the UK use language and other semiotic practices to enact identities in their day-to-day lives. Combining variationist sociolinguistics and ethnographically-informed interactional sociolinguistics, this detailed and highly reflexive account provides rich descriptions and discussions of the linguistic processes at work in a previously underexplored research environment. In doing so, it reveals fresh insights into the changes taking place in urban British English, and into the difficulties of undertaking ethnographic, sociolinguistic research in a challenging context using a combination of methods and approaches. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to students and scholars from across the fields of sociolinguistics, ethnography, and education; as well as providing a valuable resource for teachers and trainees.

Rob Drummond is Reader in Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University and Head of Youth Language at the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, UK.