Voices of a City Market

Ethnographic account of the translanguaging voices of the people in a superdiverse city

This book breaks new ground in its representation of the voices of people in a superdiverse city. Poetic and compelling, it places the reader at the heart of the market, surrounded by the voices of people from all over the world. Based on four years of ethnographic research, it is a book that reimagines the conventions of ethnographic writing.

Adrian Blackledge is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Stirling, UK. He has published widely on both multilingualism and sociolinguistics. He was Birmingham Poet Laureate from 2014-2016.

Angela Creese is Professor of Linguistic Ethnography at the University of Stirling, UK. She has published widely on multilingualism and ethnographic methods.

Adrian Blackledge is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Stirling, UK. He has published widely on both multilingualism and sociolinguistics. He was Birmingham Poet Laureate from 2014-2016.

Angela Creese is Professor of Linguistic Ethnography at the University of Stirling, UK. She has published widely on multilingualism and ethnographic methods.

The ethnographic eye and poetic sensibility Blackledge and Creese bring to their work shines through brilliantly in these scenes and characters from the everyday business of a bustling urban multicultural and multilingual food market, bringing our human diversity and common humanity to the fore. This is not a quick read, but it is a deeply rewarding one.

With coffee and croissants and chairs in a circle, this book invites us to explore the mundane world of ethnographic research amid the voices, bodies, meat cleavers, everyday racism, conviviality, and cuts of meat in a market. It takes us on a poetic expedition in search of the quintessence of experience and its impossibility, giving us instead the rhythm and rhyme of encounters with eels, intestines, milk, blood, tea and fish. Beguiling.