If you believe what you read in the newspapers then you will be aware that the linguistic habits of teenagers are eroding language standards. Often labelled sloppy, lazy, or uneducated, as the following example illustrates, the language of adolescents is rarely celebrated in the general media.

Teen talk convincingly demonstrates that, far from irritating, teenagers’ linguistic innovations provide a fascinating insight into the future of our language as it situates ‘the most frequent, funky, infamous words of teen language’ (34) within their wider diachronic perspective. This long-term view enables the systematic tracking of the history and development of these forms and reveals how their growth impacts on the organisation of the wider linguistic system. Teen talk gives us a glimpse into what's coming next and underlines the reasons why the speech of young people has been a central focus of sociolinguistics since the field's earliest stages. Tagliamonte's enthusiasm for her data, combined with its careful analysis, means the book is engaging and accessible without scrimping on theoretical rigour. This book will appeal to newcomers to the study of language change as well as seasoned sociolinguists.

Teen talk offers a good balance between theory, method, and analysis. The book comprises thirteen chapters that can be viewed in terms of three main sections. Chapters 1–3 provide the theoretical and methodological background necessary to orient the reader for the analyses that follow. Chapters 4–11 present detailed descriptions and quantitative analyses of a number of teenage linguistic features. Chapters 12 and 13 discuss some broader issues. Chapter 12 describes the emergence of a new computer-mediated mode of communication and what affect this growing genre may have on more established mediums. Chapter 13 takes stock and draws the analyses together in light of their implications for prevailing sociolinguistic models of language change.

In addition to its lively style, the book exhibits a number of engaging structural elements. Real-life excerpts are provided throughout the chapters, either as examples of the features under investigation or as examples of the meta-linguistic commentary that surround rapidly expanding forms. Not only do they bring the data to life, they demonstrate how speaker comments can be used to exemplify wider sociolinguistic evaluations, and further, how these can explain the patterns present in the data. Text boxes highlight key theoretical terms, as well as clarifying concepts, they help to orient those less familiar with sociolinguistics to important ideas in the field. Each chapter concludes with an interactive ‘Language puzzle’, where readers are encouraged to take a hands-on approach and conduct their own mini-analysis or interpretation of the data. The puzzles help consolidate the core issues introduced by the chapter and provide useful exercises for teaching or studying.

The book opens with a clear statement of intent: ‘This book is about the way teenagers talk. It is not about the way adults think they should talk. It is about the way they do talk’ (1). What follows is a succinct contextualising of the emergence of the notion of the ‘teenager’ and a swift debunking of the commonly held belief that teen speak represents the demise of language standards. Myths aside, Tagliamonte lays out the book's theoretical underpinning: Labov's (Reference Labov2001) model of incrementation. The model describes the process where children, as they become adolescents, move beyond the linguistic models provided by their caretakers and become the leaders of linguistic change. In doing so, the model relates individual trajectories of linguistic change across the lifespan to broader patterns of change at the community level. As such, it situates teenage innovation as the driving force of language change and emphasises again how the study of their behaviour is key to understanding how and why language changes.

Chapter 2 introduces the extensive data corpora used in the analyses. While all four corpora are Canadian speech, they exhibit a range of different characteristics, for example: (i) different data structures, both apparent- and real-time (trend and panel); (ii) different styles, such as storytelling, sociolinguistic interviews, and talking with peers; and (iii) different media, such as spoken and computer-mediated. The depth and breadth of the corpora enable the testing of a variety of different types of hypotheses and provide a robust base on which to form generalisations of both teen speak and more universal principles of language change. Chapter 3 outlines the methodological sociolinguistic principles that underlie this type of analysis. Concepts such as the linguistic variable or the principle of accountability are clearly laid out and provide a useful guide to anyone new to the variationist paradigm—valuable for both students and instructors.

Chapters 4–11 provide the substance of the analysis. Each chapter reports on a different feature of teen speech in the form of a series of linguistic variable analyses. Tagliamonte investigates a range of lexical, grammatical, and discourse-pragmatic features including quotatives, intensifiers, general extenders, and discourse markers, among others. These chapters provide detailed reports on the features studied. They start by situating the feature both synchronically and diachronically, providing frequent examples from the data to illustrate the various linguistic distinctions within the analysis. The methodological steps are clearly laid out and offer an excellent starting point for anyone looking to use their own data to examine the feature in question. However, while this recurrent structure helps guide the reader, the analysis chapters are far more than a variable cookbook. Each innovation is explained and contextualised within the surrounding grammar and the results discussed in light of what they indicate about the changes at work within the larger system. Through explicitly linking each analysis to wider issues of teen speech, and language change more generally, every variable analysis contributes towards the book's broader thesis. A very nice touch is the inclusion of a number of ‘bonus features’ such as the use of novel data sources to supplement the main corpora. For instance, the analysis of intensifiers in the television show Friends (chapter 5) illustrates the value and opportunity presented by less traditional sources of data- it also makes for an excellent classroom example.

Alongside teenage language, the internet is another popular target for negative linguistic commentary. As she does with teen speak, Tagliamonte scrutinises common claims using real data (spoiler: the internet is not ruining language!). Chapter 12, which focuses on computer-mediated communication (CMC), gives a detailed and empirical description of the language of the internet while speaking to a number of deeper linguistic questions. For instance, what are the dominant characteristics of language on the internet? How does internet language compare to the equivalent written and spoken modes? Does the internet lead or follow language change? The final chapter returns to the theoretical starting point and draws the book's findings together through a more elaborated discussion of Labov's (2001) incrementation model. Like any good storyteller, Tagliamonte introduces her final ‘complicating action’ before she brings the tale to its close. In this case, it is the ways in which incrementation is affected by factors such as speaker sex and the rate and stage of a change in progress. Using results from the preceding analyses, Tagliamonte tests the predictions set out in Labov's theory and provides further support for the incrementation model of language change.

Teen talk offers a fascinating tour through some of the most emblematic features of youth language while simultaneously speaking to core debates on-going in the field. Indeed, its success lies in its almost misleading accessibility: it deftly plays to our natural curiosity for the quirks of youth language while framing these within their implications for the bigger theoretical picture. Tagliamonte unpacks and reassembles ostensibly complicated ideas using familiar, real-world phenomena. As such, the book has an extremely wide appeal. It will form a valuable source for undergraduates encountering sociolinguistics for the first time, while the clear and detailed analyses will provide an excellent example to postgraduates getting to grips with their own data. The style and structure make it an ideal teaching companion and it will no doubt become a regularly featured text across courses in sociolinguistics.