It is rare that a book manages to serve as a masterclass in theory and as an in-depth study, but Emilia Di Martino's Indexing ‘chav’ on social media does both. At its core, Indexing ‘chav’ studies the evolving indexical fields and referents of ‘chav’. The book dissects the term's history from inception to modern day, unpacking its evolution across etymologies, metalinguistic dialogues, mass-media representations, and social media trends. The benefits go beyond just exploring its primary topic well. Through critical self-reflections, Di Martino also provides important notes for study design for researchers of contemporary media. With its thorough engagement with sociolinguistic literature, budding scholars struggling with difficult theoretical arguments in the field will benefit greatly from their clean use here to analyse concrete examples.
The book opens somewhat slowly, with both a preface and chapter 1 giving a background of the social positioning of ‘chav’, its definition, and the fields the study straddles. It lacks a clear statement of why the author finds ‘chav’ so fascinating and focuses more on how ‘chav’ illuminates noted phenomena rather than overcomes current concerns in the field (which it nevertheless does, of course, statement or not). Chapter 2 is then more confident, providing an excellent overview of the theories used and some important notes on best practice for scholarship using contemporary digital media.
Chapter 3 is where the book truly enters its stride with a thorough overview of ‘chav’ itself. The chapter first traces ‘chav’ etymologies before unpacking the word's spread from the street to newspapers, dictionaries, and political discourse. Chapter 4 moves this discussion into the sociolinguistic, looking at ‘chav’ as a semiotic object. Deftly tracing the role of mass media in influencing the indexical values of ‘chav’, the chapter deserves special mention for handily attending to the co-occurring ‘non-linguistic’ signs relevant to the total ‘chav’ linguistic fact. Finally, chapters 5 and 6 provide a fascinating discussion of how global digital media flows can drastically alter indexical referents. Chapter 5 begins with a novel discussion of the value of Tik-Tok for linguistic anthropology before examining how ‘chav’ has transformed through multimodal forms of discourse facilitated through the platform. Chapter 6 then closes the book with a general contents summary that expands into a discussion of how ‘chav’ indexicals have appeared in other UK social scenes, closing with some theories about further ‘chav’ evolutions on other digital platforms. Chapter 7 offers a few concluding remarks.
Taken as a whole, Indexing ‘chav’ is an incredible display of multidisciplinary scholarship and sociolinguistic knowledge. The only strong critique is in presentation, especially accessibility. In particular, chapters often peter out, missing a clean overview or strong statement of impact at the end. Combined with rather thick language in parts, this makes Indexing ‘chav’ potentially less accessible to early career scholars. This critique is one limited to presentation, and this limitation does not impact the overall strength of the research project, which unquestionably achieves its goals with aplomb.
