Sociolinguistics and Social Theory brings together new critical overviews of the interface between language, social structure and social action. A wide range of theoretical and methodological traditions are represented: variationist and ethnographic sociolinguistics, conversation and interaction analysis, discourse analysis, social semiotics and ideological linguistics, as well as sociology and social theory itself. The book proposes a new agenda for sociolinguistic theory, in the broadest sense, and debates the theoretical grounding of different research methods. Contributors include Frederick Erickson, David Graddol, Christian Heath, Monica Heller, John Heritage, Gunther Kress, Per Linell, Michael Lynch, Miriam Meyerhoff, Lesley Milroy, Jonathan Potter, Ben Rampton, Celia Roberts, Richard Watts, John Wilson and Ruth Wodak.

Nikolas Coupland is Professor and Director of the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University.
Srikant Sarangi is Reader in Language and Communication at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, and Christopher N. Candlin is Chair Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Centre for English Language Education and Communication Research, City University of Hong Kong.

Introduction; 1: Language, theory and the social; 1: A comparative perspective on social theoretical accounts of the language-action interrelationship; 2: Dynamics of differentiation; 3: Sociolinguistics, cognitivism, and discursive psychology; 2: Language and discourse as social practice; 4: Dynamics of discourse or stability of structure; 5: Discourse, accumulation of symbolic capital and power; 6: Co-membership and wiggle room; 3: Language, ideology and social categorisation; 7: Age in social and sociolinguistic theory; 8: Undoing the macro/micro dichotomy; 9: The social categories of race and class; 10: Language crossing, cross-talk, and cross-disciplinarity in sociolinguistics; 11: Discourse theory and language planning; 4: Retrospective commentaries; 12: 'Critical' social theory; 13: Who needs social theory anyway?; 14: 'Motivational relevancies'