Studying Language in Interaction: A Practical Research Guide to Communicative Repertoire and Sociolinguistic Diversity

Studying Language in Interaction is a holistic practical guide with a hybrid purpose: To emphasize a particular approach to language in the world―a theory of language that has room for communicative repertoire and sociolinguistic diversity―and to provide a practical guide for new researchers of language in interaction.

Each chapter focuses on one way of communicating, providing a set of strategies to observe, note, and reflect on context-specific ways of using multiple languages, of sounding, naming, using social media, telling stories, being ironic, and engaging in everyday routines. This approach provides a practical guide without stripping out all the wonder and nuance of language in interaction that originally draws the novice researcher to critical inquiry and makes language relevant to the humans who use it every day. Studying Language in Interaction is not only a practical research guide; it is also a workbook for being in the world in ways that matter, illustrating that any research on language in interaction involves both tricks of the trade and a sustained engagement with humanity.

With extensive pedagogical resources, this is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology, and education who are embarking on fieldwork projects.

Betsy Rymes is Professor and Chair of the Educational Linguistics Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her previous publications include Communicating Beyond Language (Routledge, 2014), Classroom Discourse Analysis (Routledge, 2016), and How We Talk about Language (2020).