The thesis of Social class in applied linguistics is that social class is, for the most part, either absent from applied linguistics and sociolinguistics or lacking firm grounding in political economy. David Block calls for linguists to reconsider social class in ways that serve a ‘transformative’ rather than a ‘recognition’ agenda, that is, seek to undermine social inequality rather than simply establish awareness of cultural differences. This appeal is framed within Block's explicit theoretical turn from a postmodernist to a structuralist or ‘critical realist’ perspective.

Chapter 1 charts Block's current ideology concerning the global political economy. Growing economic stratification, Block argues, has led (some) academics to reconsider class as a dominant structural force, rather than ignoring it in favor of race, sex, and other axes of social difference. The accumulation of capital remains the controlling process in the contemporary world, though its influence has come to be masked under discourses of globalization. Economy therefore needs to be central in applied linguistics, by contrast with the highly localized, social turn that characterizes much recent research. This chapter says very little about linguistics and can be seen as a somewhat jumbled assembly of notes on political economy. As such, its immediate value for the reader is perhaps limited to establishing Block's perspective as writer, but it also supplies an introduction to various interrelated strains of scholarship that will be useful starting-points for linguists endeavoring to chart an orientation through theories of political economy in a global context.

By contrast, chapter 2 boldly lays out a critical summary of class theory in sociology from the foundational scholars—Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim—through twentieth-century theory. Here Block demonstrates a very solid understanding of these theorists' fundamental concepts, particularly the ways in which their basic definitions of class differ from one another. Marx's class theory is presented in detail and at times defensively, with a focus on key notions such as base and superstructure, economic determinism, and the labor theory of value. The contemporary Marxist Erik Olin Wright is also cited at length. Durkheim and Weber are then presented in contrast with Marx, with nice attention paid to similarities and differences. Subsequently, Block touches upon more recent theories that stand on the shoulders of Marx and Weber, including those of Thorstein Veblen, Ralf Dahrendorf, and especially John H. Goldthorpe and Pierre Bourdieu. The discussion does not aim to cover all recent influential theoretical work; for example, Anthony Giddens and David Grusky are scarcely mentioned.

Chapter 2 continues with Block's understanding of the key elements of class as a chiefly economic phenomenon. This turns out to consist primarily of the juxtaposition of well-known ‘objective’ class schema, on the one hand, and ethnographic accounts of ‘subjective’, lived working class experience, on the other. Later ethnographic accounts of schools uncover behavioral and symbolic oppositions between students oriented toward school and middle-class norms and students oriented toward working-class norms. Thus by contrast with class as a set of occupational positions, we encounter class as habitus, symbolized identities, and differential geographic mobility, all of which are argued to be related to, but not reducible to, economic differences. An ending call for the more intentional use of intersectionality in thinking about class comes a bit abruptly, not preceded by a substantive discussion of Intersectionality Theory and not explicitly linked back to Block's orientation toward a primarily economic view of class. This chapter does not address linguistics, nor is the discussion of class theory obviously written for linguists in particular. Therefore, while it usefully offers a well-informed walk through class theory in sociology and some adjacent disciplines, its service to linguistics does not surpass that of the many existing reviews of literature on class, especially those sympathetic to Marx.

Linguistics becomes the primary object of attention in chapter 3, which is a critical review of selected approaches to social class within sociolinguistics. The first half of the chapter deals almost exclusively with William Labov's foundational variationist research, the concurrent work of Basil Bernstein pointing to the ‘restricted’ language of African American children, and Bourdieu's criticism of both. The second half of the chapter briefly describes James and Lesley Milroys' use of network information in an effort to explain class-related linguistic differences, followed by Brice Heath's ethnography of two working class towns in South Carolina. Heath's research, Block argues, was foundational in its findings of different traditions of parent-child interaction between White and the African American communities, but it says very little about class directly, focusing instead on race. Ben Rampton's research program is offered by way of contrast: it presents an explicit definition of class and directly confronts the role of class in social interaction. Class positions, according to Rampton, both produce and are constructed by linguistic exchanges.

Yet recent innovations in sociolinguistics are deemed less promising; the evolution of concepts such as repertoire, multimodality, style, and stance are encouraging, but ‘one finds nowhere a clear presentation of what is actually meant by “class”’ (p. 103). Whereas sociolinguistics requires a top-down definition, a reification, of class, Block complains that contemporary sociolinguistic work is characterized by the ‘erasure’ of class and, if anything, a ‘recognition’ agenda rather than one focused on ‘redistribution’. This is to say that sociolinguistics legitimizes working-class codes rather than focusing on the structural forces underlying linguistic differences between members of different class positions. The problem, Block says, is that this agenda is not ‘transformative’, that is, it does nothing to alter unequal material conditions (p. 104). In sociolinguistics,

The mechanism(s) by which sociolinguistics could transform the capitalist political economy are left unspecified. This chapter is likely not intended as a thorough introduction to class in sociolinguistics, as can be found elsewhere; for example, it leaves aside Labov's later treatment of class in Philadelphia and ignores some focused, theorized discussions of class in both quantitative and qualitative studies (Mallinson Reference Mallinson2006; Bucholtz Reference Bucholtz and McElhinny2007; Mallinson & Dodsworth Reference Mallinson and Dodsworth2009). Further, the chapter provides few examples of the erasure of class in sociolinguistics. Nevertheless, Block is quite right in saying that most work in sociolinguistics neither provides a theorized definition of class nor attempts any detailed explanation of the link between language and political economy.

Chapter 4 continues with the observation that social class has largely been erased or approached without attention to political economy, this time in bilingual and multilingual research in education settings. Block calls for more explicit critical engagement with neoliberalism and a foregrounding of economic inequality rather than social prejudices associated with race and ethnicity. Several pages are devoted to summarizing studies of bilingualism in education settings and how each of them falls short in addressing social class. The criticism extends to research on ‘complementary schools’, which

The chapter offers very little in the way of specific suggestions for improvement in this respect. Some ideas appear on pages 124–28, where Block first summarizes a study of immigration and social class (Castles & Kosack Reference Castles and Kosack1973) and then lists some types of economic information about immigrants that could enrich studies of bilingual education. Subsequent sections on bilingual education and global English also depart from the first half of the chapter in summarizing work that successfully addresses social class, including an examination of English as a commodity in the Marxist sense, ultimately a ‘soft skill’ in the global market. Two case studies, particularly a comparison between a business college and a women's college in India, illustrate the economic and cultural correlates of English in education settings. Chapter 5, which addresses social class in research on second language acquisition, mirrors chapter 4 in first observing the pervasive absence of social class. Yet there are exceptions—all case studies of English learners in various settings, including Block's own previous research. In some cases, the focus is on the ways in which learners’ English proficiency interacts with their material conditions. In another case, the focus is on a learner's discourse about class-related dispositions and behaviors in the classroom.

This book is a courageous confrontation of the absence of the consideration of material conditions, and associated life chances, in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. If it tends to offer few concrete suggestions for reform, it nevertheless calls much-needed attention to a cavernous gap in linguistic research. Block's appeal for a political economy-based perspective both merits and requires the development of new theory-driven research paradigms.