Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 1-19

3. The Research Context

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 21-45

4. Our Roles and Identities

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 47-58

5. Methods

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 59-101

6. A Year in the Life of the PRU

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 103-189

7. Manchester Youth Language

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 191-227

8. TH-Stopping, Ethnicity, and Grime

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 229-254

9. Giving Back

   • Rob Drummond

   Pages 255-268

10. Final Thoughts

    • Rob Drummond

    Pages 269-272

11. Back Matter

    Pages 273-286

    PDF

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.

• Learning Centres
• behavioural difficulties
• Pupil Referral Unit
• identity creation
• language and ethnicity
• semiotics
• sociolinguistic variation
• urban adolescent speech
• dialect
• linguistic ethnography
• grime
• Multicultural Urban British English
• Multicultural London English
• Pupil Referral Unit (PRU)
• Manchester
• youth language
• urban street style
• ethnography
• sociology of adolescence
• childhood

“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 toanyone considering linguistic ethnography – of any type – in the future.” (Lucy Jones, Journal of Linguistics, June 14, 2019)
“This book is a gem. It gives rare insights into the lives and language of young people in non-mainstream learning centres, treated with the respect and admiration that Drummond shows us they clearly deserve. But it does far more than this. It portrays the roller coaster ride of a successful interdisciplinary research project, from start to finish, with all the trials and excitement encountered along the way. This engagingly written personal account will be hugely important for linguists, teachers, policy makers and anyone interested in urban youth language, and inspirational and essential reading for both new and experienced researchers.” (Jenny Cheshire FBA, Professor of Linguistics, Queen Mary, University of London, UK)​

• Department of Languages, Information and Communication, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom

  Rob Drummond

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

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