In Language and social justice, the authors introduce activist applied linguistics by discussing how language enacts a range of social inequalities and injustices. They explain that activist applied linguistics extends critical discourse analysis by offering and calling for ‘socially transformative actions’ characterised by resistance and subversion (3). The reflexive biographical reflections in the introduction chapter are particularly powerful in the way the authors position themselves as both privileged and oppressed, and how their identity and experiences guided the selection of case studies in this book.

Chapter 2 discusses philosophical and theoretical perspectives on social justice and offers a definition of social justice while acknowledging the complexity of the task. The chapter also presents a glossary of terms (e.g. hegemony, intersectionality, oppression). Particularly insightful in this chapter is the authors’ invitation to consider the significance of emotion in research, drawing on Global South scholarship. Continuing the theoretical discussion, chapter 3 discusses approaches and frameworks (e.g. corpus linguistics, multimodal discourse analysis, queer linguistics) for examining language and social (in)justice.

Chapters 4 to 14 consider social justice research in various domains (e.g. family, school, higher education, media, politics). As a fluent speaker of Penang Hokkien (a language that is gradually declining in use in Penang, Malaysia), I was drawn to chapter 4, which discusses language maintenance and its challenges, including conflict among family members who have different beliefs about heritage language. As most readers of this book note are likely to be able-bodied, I would like to highlight a case study in chapter 7 on deafness and linguistic landscapes in universities. The chapter explains how universities can be physically accessible yet linguistically inaccessible for the deaf community. In a similar vein, chapter 8 reflects on inaccessibility of information and advice for the sign language community in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, due to the absence of a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter live at the first nine Covid-19 briefings on TV. Activism in this case study involved fundraising to file a legal case against the UK government arguing that the government has breached the reasonable adjustment duty by failing to provide any BSL interpreters live. Chapter 9 discusses the lack of legal consequences on explicit discriminatory and offensive linguistic behaviour on social media platforms, and how social media users can engage in activism. The chapter discusses how anti-gender ideologies are expressed on these platforms, drawing on Van Dijk’s discursive categories of prejudice (e.g. consensus, counter-factual, evidence).

A compelling feature of this book is that its collection of case studies was contributed by both academic and non-academic activists. A feature of the book that I find particularly helpful is the activity text boxes, which serve four purposes: offering case studies to highlight issues of social injustices, encouraging readers to reflect on the issues, suggesting specific actions to challenge social injustices, and offering a list of further readings. This book would be a welcome resource for students and researchers studying sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis.