3rd Edition

Crossing Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents

By Ben Rampton Copyright 2018
    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    400 Pages
    by Routledge

    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. It focuses on language crossing - the use of Panjabi by adolescents of African-Caribbean and Anglo descent, the use of Creole by adolescents with Panjabi and Anglo backgrounds, and the use of stylized Indian English. Crossing’s central question is: how far and in what ways do these intricate processes of language sharing and exchange help to overcome race stratification and contribute to a new sense of mixed youth, class and neighbourhood community?

    Ben Rampton produces detailed ethnographic and interactional analyses of spontaneous speech data, and integrates the discussion of particular incidents with theories of discourse, code-switching, social movements, resistance and ritual drawn from sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

    Now a Routledge Linguistics Classic with a new preface which sets the work in its current context, this book remains key reading for all those working in the areas of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.

    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

    Biography

    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).

    "The importance of this book for sociolinguistics cannot be overestimated."

    C. Kramsch, 1998, Review, Language and Education 

    "Rampton’s book Crossing put the sociolinguistic study of style, and of interethnic styling in particular, on a new footing. […] The distinctiveness of Rampton’s work lies in its ethnographic depth, theoretical openness and empirical specificity."

    N. Coupland, 2007, Review, Style 

    "Ben Rampton has produced a very important study, not only on language and ethnicity among adolescents… but on a range of sociolinguistic topics."

    J. Blommaert, 1998, Review, Journal of Sociolinguistics 

    "A research monograph which manages to be empirically thorough, methodologically rigorous, and of practical and theoretical interest."

    M. Heller, 1997, Review, International Journal of Bilingualism