Negotiating boundaries at work: Talking and transitions draws upon extensive and varied empirical research to explore the various transitional points in workplaces across the globe. The edited collection successfully reflects a range of transitions, their nuances, and difficulties. As the editors discuss, the global workplace is changing and these transitions are becoming more relevant to the core of workplace discourse analysis, particularly as workplace sociolinguistics is a relatively new area of research. The chapters succeed in engaging a sociolinguistic audience, building on Almut Koester's Investigating workplace discourse (Routledge, 2006), which called for more fine-grained analysis of these workplace arenas. The book is presented in two parts: transitions to a profession and transitions within a profession—but more than this, the book is a look at the space between the macro and micro level, going back and forth to illustrate the interactional machinery which (a) influences and (b) is influenced by language ideologies and policies.

Part 1 focuses on interviews; here the various authors draw on real and role-play job-interview data to examine how macro-level ideologies are exhibited through micro-level talk-in-interaction, and how particular members construct their role to attain ‘full membership’ within workplace communities of practice; the authors note the difficulties for both the interviewer and interviewee. The first part finishes with Stefano A. Losa & Laurent Filliettaz (chapter 6) focusing on the transitional process for an apprentice becoming a full member within a community of practice, illustrating the practices and shared meanings members’ must navigate to become legitimate members of a workplace community. These and the other authors propose a more dynamic conception of gatekeeping discourse and argue against a narrow understanding of it.

Part 2 follows the membership thread, further explicating the complex transition in acquiring implicit social values and normative practices as members move from peripheral to full membership of workplace communities. The first chapters, by Kristin Bührig & Jochen Rehbein (chapter 7), Anne H. Fabricius (chapter 8), and Anne Franziskus (chapter 9), explore multilingualism in the workplace and how normative understandings get enacted in and through talk, detailing intricate identity work and how individuals manage transitions through workplace talk. Later chapters by Minna Suni (chapter 10) and Seongsook Choi (chapter 11) unpack the conflict and tensions in the employment environment, with Suni noting the ‘spiral of peripheral participation’ and the construction of a credible workplace identity. The various authors argue that the quality of the workplace experience is tied to language policies that promote or restrict different language use.

The book is coherently and comprehensibly written for readers with limited experience in researching interaction. It is intended for those working within workplace discourse analysis, and whilst the two parts broadly distinguish different points of transition, the chapters overlap in their naturalistic and fine-grained approach to data, and the book excels in being more than the sum of its parts. The universal nature of transitions we encounter throughout our everyday lives means that these junctures are fruitful areas for research, and like the final chapter by Choi suggests, further research on how interdisciplinarity is interactionally accomplished ought to support the increasing and varied projects that eschew disciplinary boundaries.