This monograph recounts Rob Drummond’s experiences conducting a sociolinguistic, ethnographic study in two Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) in Manchester, England. PRUs are educational centres for children who cannot attend mainstream school – most often because they have been excluded for poor behaviour. It is important to note that the ethnographic fieldwork detailed in the book was carried out by Rob Drummond and Susan Dray, his Research Associate (RA). Drummond is the sole author, as the Principal Investigator on the project, but he clearly acknowledges the crucial role that Dray played. Indeed, he is explicit throughout about how the research project progressed in ways uniquely informed by his collaboration with her.
The original aim of Drummond’s research was to identify a distinctly ‘urban’ variety of English – or the Manchester equivalent of Multicultural London English (Cheshire et al. Reference Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox and Torgersen2011). However, the data he collected did not, in the end, lead him to the clearest of conclusions. Rather than presenting a wealth of data or in-depth theorisation, ‘the overall focus of the book is on the context of the research and the process of carrying it out’ (1). The book is focused primarily on the practical aspects of doing ethnography in this setting and, as a result, is an enormously useful resource for other linguistic ethnographers taking a variety of approaches.
In Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’, Drummond gives a candid account of his experiences trying to locate participants for a pilot project. He describes his attempts to meet likely users of ‘urban’ Manchester English, and writes honestly about the impact of him being a white, middle-class researcher entering spaces reserved for young people with substantially less privilege. The account that he provides in this chapter offers a nice illustration of the complex process of locating potential research sites and forging relationships with people in the field.
Chapter 2, ‘The research context’, outlines the ethnographic context of the research project: we learn about PRUs generally, and the units where this research took place specifically. A great deal of information is given about the day-to-day workings of the PRUs, the relationships between the staff and young people within each unit, and the individuals who took part in the research. This sets the scene for the reader, enabling them to make sense of what comes later in the book.
Chapter 3, ‘Our roles and identities’, is brief but revealing of the necessarily reflexive nature of ethnographic research. Drummond explains how his and Dray’s experiences within each PRU, as well as their own individual identities, impacted the roles they could adopt and the relationships they could forge. Drummond explains, for example, that thanks to him being a middle-aged, middle-class white man with a southern English accent, he had to work very hard to alleviate the young people’s suspicions that he was a police officer (49). Included in this chapter are some extracts from Drummond and Dray’s fieldwork diaries, in which they reflect on how they were perceived. This gives insight into their experiences, and will certainly be beneficial to new ethnographers planning their own fieldwork.
Chapter 4, ‘Methods’, is one of the longest chapters in the book. Here, Drummond critiques concepts fundamental to Labovian sociolinguistics and outlines the principles of third-wave variationist studies (Eckert Reference Eckert2012). This account serves as an introduction to modern variationist research for readers new to sociolinguistics as a discipline. Drummond then moves on to explaining interactional sociolinguistics – albeit very briefly – and, more specifically, Dray’s approach to this in relation to the project. The chapter offers an account of successful collaborations between qualitative and quantitative sociolinguists, helpfully foregrounding the challenges but also the opportunities that come from this sort of work. For Drummond and Dray, it seems, there were certain differences between their approaches which proved insurmountable; this effectively led to them conducting two simultaneous studies within one project. Drummond suggests this was due to their collaboration beginning at the very start of the project rather than only once data had been collected, which is more typical of joint sociolinguistic studies. Of course, this is what makes this project particularly interesting, and Drummond offers practical reflections and suggestions for other scholars planning to embark on similar research.
The chapter moves on to the process of taking fieldnotes, getting individuals on board as participants, creating rapport with the young people, and doing participant observation. Drummond acknowledges his inexperience as an ethnographer and, rather than gloss over the mistakes he made, writes candidly about how much he learnt as he went along. He communicates his anxieties when he was beginning the fieldwork and his feelings of discomfort while in the PRUs. Drummond’s account of the awkwardness of doing ethnography will be highly relatable to anyone who has ever engaged in this kind of fieldwork, and is extremely refreshing to read. I will certainly recommend this section of the book to any students and colleagues thinking about doing ethnography for the first time.
Chapter 5, ‘A year in the life of the PRU’, is the longest chapter of the book and unusual in that it consists almost entirely of fieldwork notes from both Drummond and Dray. They are presented chronologically to offer an account of the processes and changing perceptions of both fieldworkers, and in some instances are interspersed with transcribed data. Presenting the fieldnotes in this way gives unique insight into the experience of the ethnographers and the setting of the data collection, which is of great importance when interpreting the data presented later. Drummond includes reflections throughout the chapter on aspects of the methods used, and brief insights into the language that was recorded. These short comments are interesting, as are the transcribed extracts, though it would perhaps have been useful to include some discourse analysis of the data at this stage. The reason for not doing this, presumably, is because of the principally methodological focus of the book: Chapter 5 concludes with a summary of the main themes presented within it, all of which relate to practical aspects of doing the fieldwork (e.g. knowing when to approach individuals and ethical concerns).
In Chapter 6, ‘Manchester youth language’, we are presented with some of the acoustic, grammatical, and lexical data collected during the project. The chapter endeavours to describe elements of the language used by the young people to index an urban Manchester identity. Drummond asserts that he is indicating patterns rather than asserting their existence, and tends not to provide the in-depth statistical account of correlations between linguistic and social variation that one might expect of a traditional variationist study. In this sense, though the data presented here will be of use to those engaging in future research into the Manchester dialect, the analytical conclusions are very tentative.
Chapter 7, ‘TH-stopping, ethnicity, and grime’, represents a more familiar approach to variationist sociolinguistics by correlating a social category (ethnicity) with a sociolinguistic, phonological variable (TH-stopping). The chapter provides an overview of research into TH-stopping as well as language and ethnicity more broadly, and problematises the traditional ways in which sociolinguists have pre-grouped speakers by ethnicity. Drummond finds, for example, that while ethnicity alone does not appear to be statistically significant in terms of whether a young person uses [t] in words such as thing (pronouncing it [ting], a feature commonly linked to black speakers of British English), the young people whose everyday practice included rap did use the variant more frequently. Since rap music in Britain is more associated with black culture, Drummond suggests that ethnicity is relevant, but not in terms of a direct correlation. The chapter goes on to present some interactional analysis of the moments where [t] was employed, using this convincingly to argue that the variant indexes a tough, urban, ‘street’ identity – one clearly relevant to the context of the PRUs.
In Chapter 8, ‘Giving back’, Drummond reflects on the impact his project has had. This includes what he and Dray were able to ‘give back’ to the young people themselves, such as helping them prepare for college applications, as well as the development of resources to be used with teachers and young people in the future. Among these resources are comic strips Drummond helped create based on recorded interactions that took place during the study – usually when there was some sort of incident resulting from linguistic miscommunication, such as when a young person thought they were being accused of something they had not done. The comic strips are reproduced in the book, along with discussion tasks to use with young people and teachers, and represent a highly innovative attempt at ensuring that sociolinguistic research has impact in ‘the real world’.
Chapter 9, ‘Final thoughts’, reflects on the experience of doing the research and what the book offers to the field. I am inclined to agree with Drummond that, while his account of urban language in this context does not offer concrete evidence of a Manchester equivalent to Multicultural London English, it does indicate that a multiethnolect might be present. Without the close attention to the context of language production given here, it would not be possible to determine the significance of the data collected and analysed in this book. The main contribution to sociolinguistics made by this monograph, however, is its detailed and frank account of doing ethnography.
The book also delivers a very personal account of Drummond’s experiences not only as a fieldworker and analyst, but as a project manager. It is particularly refreshing that he acknowledges the challenges faced by those running externally-funded projects where the budget primarily facilitates the employment of an RA – particularly when the nature of the research requires immersion in the ethnographic context. Drummond is also candid in his discussion of the difficulty of ‘owning’ a project (and writing a single-authored monograph which details its results) when much of the data collection has been done by a colleague. Indeed, the majority of fieldnotes presented in Chapter 5 are Dray’s, and, as noted at the outset, Drummond’s analysis is clearly informed by Dray’s work on this project. Drummond’s reflections on these practical aspects of his experience will both resonate with and be useful for other scholars writing funding bids and planning projects.
Drummond’s writing will be accessible to a wide range of readers, including students and those with no background in sociolinguistic research. This is in part thanks to his informal, first-person style, and partly due to the structure of providing clear introductions to key concepts within each chapter as and when they are relevant. Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity offers a thoughtful, reflective, and unusually honest account of doing fieldwork in a challenging context. It is engaging, highly readable, and will certainly be of use to anyone considering linguistic ethnography – of any type – in the future.
