This paper describes the development of 'linguistic ethnography' in Britain over the last 5-15 years. British anthropology tends to overlook language, and instead, the U.K. Linguistic Ethnography Forum (LEF) has emerged from socio-and applied linguistics, bringing together a number of formative traditions (inter alia, Interactional Sociolinguistics, New Literacy Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis). The career paths and the institutional positions of LEF participants make their ethnography more a matter of getting analytic distance on what's close-at-hand than a process of getting familiar with the strange. When linked with post-structuralism more generally, this 'from-inside-outwards' trajectory produces analytic sensibilities tuned to discourse analysis as a method, doubtful about 'comprehensive' and 'exotic' ethnography, and well disposed to practical/political intervention. LE sits comfortably in the much broader shift from mono-to inter-disciplinarity in British higher education, though the inter-disciplinary environment makes it hard to take the relationship between linguistics and ethnography for granted.

TESOL practice in the schooling sector in England has implicitly assumed that ESL students are linguistic and social outsiders and that there is a neat one‐to‐one correspondence between ethnicity and language. This perspective has tended to conceptualise L2 learners as a linguistically diverse group (from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds) but with similar language learning needs. However, demographic and social changes in the past 30 years have rendered such assumptions inadequate and misleading, particularly in multiethnic urban areas. In this article we seek to (a) offer an alternative account of the classroom realities in contemporary multilingual schools where the linguistic profiles and language learning needs of ESL students are not easily understood in terms of fixed concepts of ethnicity and language; (b) draw on recent developments in cultural theory to clarify the shifting and changing relationship among ethnicity, social identity, and language use in the context of postcolonial diaspora; and (c) question the pedagogical relevance of the notion of native speaker and propose that instead TESOL professionals should be concerned with questions about language expertise, language inheritance, and language affiliation.

The study of teenagers in the classroom, and how they interact with one another and their teachers, can tell us a great deal about late-modern society. In this revealing account, Ben Rampton presents the extensive sociolinguistic research he carried out in an inner-city high school. Through his vivid analysis of classroom talk, he offers answers to some important questions: does social class still count for young people, or is it in demise? Are traditional authority relationships in schools being undermined? How is this affected by popular media culture? His study, which provides numerous transcripts and three extensive case studies, introduces a way of perceiving established ideas in sociolinguistics, such as identity, insecurity, the orderliness of classroom talk, and the experience of learning at school. In doing so, Rampton shows how work in sociolinguistics can contribute to some major debates in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and education.

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