Focusing on urban youth culture and language crossing, this foundational volume by Ben Rampton has played a pivotal role in the shaping of language and ethnic identity as a domain of study. A vital precursor to later developments in sociolinguistics such as linguistic ethnography and superdiversity, it includes detailed analyses of spontaneous speech data, and integrates the discussion of particular incidents with theories of discourse, code-switching, social movements, resistance and ritual. Now a Linguistics Classic and with a new preface which sets the work in its current context, this remains key reading for all those working in the areas of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics.

Acknowledgements Transcription Symbols and Conventions Preface to the Routledge Linguistics Classics Edition Part I: Introductory Introduction Local Reports of Language Crossing Part II: Interaction with Adults: Contesting Stratification Stylised Asian English (i) Panjabi (i) Creole (i) Part III: Interaction with Peers: Negotiating Solidarity Stylised Asian English (ii) Panjabi (ii) Creole (ii) Part IV: Crossing and Performance Art Creole and SAE (iii) Panjabi (iii) Part V: Conclusions Crossing and the Sociolinguistics of Language Contact Crossing, Discourse and Ideology Educational Discourses on Language Appendix I Appendix II Bibliography Index Figures Numbered extracts, settings and main participants

Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at King's College London. He is author of Language and Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School (2006), co-author of Researching Language: Issues of Power and Method (Routledge, 1992), and co-editor of The Language, Ethnicity and Race Reader (Routledge, 2003) and Language and Superdiversity (Routledge, 2016).