This is a lively, practical guide that provides a fascinating linguistic description of six familiar text and discourse types, showing how language works in everyday life to perform its particular purpose. Through original examples, students are introduced to a wide-ranging repertoire of analytical concepts and techniques, described in basic, clear terms, and drawn from a broad range of areas of linguistics and language study. The aim of the book is to enable students to discover for themselves what is interesting about different language situations, and to begin to interrogate the relationship between language, society, and ideology.

The Language of Everyday Life includes: topics for discussion; exercises and further readings; an extensive glossary of technical terms; and a practical guide to project work.