Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century: Linguistic Practices across Urban Spaces

The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.

'Three points will make this volume a strong contribution to the sociolinguistics of youth identities in the twenty-first century: its inclusive approach to structure, practice and ideology as closely intertwined dimensions of linguistic study; its coverage of a broad range of languages, communities, and communicative contexts; and the comparative design of the individual chapters, which reveal fascinating, and sometimes unexpected, patterns of similarity and contrast.'

Jannis Androutsopoulos - Universität Hamburg

'This is an inspiring volume. The idea of co-authoring each multi-sited ethnography chapter is a wonderfully innovative approach to understanding what makes for diversity of local linguistic practices among transnational urban youth. This is a methodology for our times, promising a refreshing approach to global and South-North dialogues.'

Christopher Stroud - Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholms Universitet

‘One of the major contributions of this volume is the numerical extent of cross-cultural examples within each chapter … researchers interested in youth language in superdiverse settings will find this collection of articles as an invaluable resource.’

Katherine Morales Luge Source: The Linguist List

'… the methodological and thematic diversity of this collection offers an impressively broad overview of urban vernaculars in Germanic language-speaking Europe and selected urban areas around the world.'

Zsuzsanna Fagyal Source: Journal of Sociolinguistics

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Language, Youth and Identity in the 21st Century

Linguistic Practices across Urban Spaces

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