The last decade has seen a fundamental rethinking of the concept of context. Rather than functioning solely as a constraint on linguistic performance, context is now also analysed as a product of language use. In this new perspective, language and context are seen as interactively achieved phenomena, rather than predefined sets of forms and contents. The essays in this collection, written by many of the leading figures in the social sciences, critically reexamine the concept of context from a variety of different angles and propose new ways of thinking about it with reference to specific human activities such as face-to-face interaction, radio talk, medical diagnosis, political encounters and socialisation practices. Each essay is prefaced by an introduction by the editors which provides relevant theoretical and methodological background and demonstrates its relation to other essays in the volume. The editors' general introduction provides a lucid overview of the issues currently debated. Rethinking Context will be required reading for everyone working within the fields of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, conversation analysis and the sociology of language.

Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology is a clear and accessible exploration of the prominent theoretical issues in linguistic anthropology and a student-friendly introduction to the study of language in real-life social contexts around the world. Combining classic studies on language in social contexts and cutting-edge, contemporary scholarship, Ahearn provides a unifying synthesis of research in linguistic anthropology and looks towards future research in the field.
Treating language as inextricably intertwined with culture and social relations Living Language combines theory with examples of contemporary language use to explore the way in which language creates, maintains, challenges, and reconfigures social hierarchies. Chapter topics include gender, race, and ethnicity, language acquisition and socialization, performance, literacy practices, multilingualism, and globalization. Laura Ahearn introduces the fascinating field of linguistic anthropology as well as underlining the value of an ethnographically grounded approach to the study of language.