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.
