Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity

Rob Drummond author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG

Published:3rd Apr '18

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity cover

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.




“This collaborative piece of research raises awareness of the value of nonstandard language and informs policymakers and commentators, which will hopefully help mitigate social bias and inequality. It also has implications for future studies, both empirically and theoretically, by offering an elaborate account of conducting fieldwork as well as combining different research traditions. This book is especially helpful to those who will conduct school-based ethnography.” (Gloria Yan Dou, Language in Society, Vol. 49 (3), 2020)
“Drummond’s writing will be accessible to a wide range of readers, including students and those with no background in sociolinguistic research. … Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity offers a thoughtful, reflective, and unusually honest account of doing fieldwork in a challenging context. It is engaging, highly readable, and will certainly be of use to anyone considering linguistic ethnography – of any type – in the future.” (Lucy Jones, Journal of Linguistics, June 14, 2019)

ISBN: 9783319734613

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 647g

286 pages

1st ed. 2018