WP210 Crossing 30 years later

The fieldwork for Crossing: Language & Ethnicity among Adolescents took place over 30 years ago.? In this preface to a 3rd edition, I review three subsequent projects that have led beyond the book?s original findings and conclusions. These projects have shown (a) how crossing and stylisation involve ground level ideological commentary on different kinds of socio-historical process; (b) that the ways of speaking described in the book have been historically and biographically durable, lasting into middle age well beyond adolescence in the 1980s; (c) how the notion of ?vernacular? needs to be revised; (d) how second language speakers of English can be drawn into the account more fully; (e) that the concept of crossing is relevant to institutionalised language education in settings affected by legacies of violent conflict ? it?s not only a vernacular practice; and (f) that crossing isn?t necessarily convivial, and it?s not just another word for ?translanguaging?.