A B S T R A C T As Coupland and others show, Bauman's account of "performance" provides a valuable perspective on speech stylization across a range of public contexts. This article explores the limitations of performance as a window on crossing and stylization in everyday practice, and although recognizing other frames as well, it dwells on Goffman's interaction ritual, cross-referring to two studies of adolescents in England. In the fi rst, race and ethnicity were controversial, and the performance of other-ethnic styles was risky. But interaction ritual constructed crossing and stylization as urgent responses to the exigencies of the moment, and this made them more acceptable. In the second, performance implies a refl exive composure that is hard to reconcile with informants' experience of social class as an uncomfortable but only half-articulated issue, whereas interaction ritual provides a sharp lens on how youngsters used stylized "posh" and Cockney varieties to register their apprehension of ongoing stratifi cation. (Interaction ritual, stylization, crossing, performance) 1
T h e P r o b l e mSpeech stylization and language crossing have been the focus of a good deal of sociolinguistic interest in recent years. 2 Stylization involves refl exive communicative action in which speakers produce specially marked and often exaggerated representations of languages, dialects, and styles that lie outside their own habitual repertoire (at least as this is perceived within the situation at hand). Crossing is closely related, but it involves a stronger sense of social or ethnic boundary transgression, the variants being used are more likely to be seen as anomalously "other" for the speaker, and questions of legitimacy and entitlement can arise. As pointedly non-habitual speech practices, stylization and crossing break with ordinary modes of action and interpretation, invite attention to creative agency in language use, and often also contribute to the denaturalization of hegemonic language ideologies.