# Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/3, 2003: 432±442 REVIEW ARTICLE Sociolinguistics and language as cultural practice Robert Train Sonoma State University, California Sandra R. Schecter and Robert Bayley. Language as Cultural Practice: Mexi- canos en al Norte. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2002. xiv + 224 pp. Paper (0±8058±3534±2) $24.50. A prospective reader of Sandra Schecter and Robert Bayley's recent book might be intrigued by the notion of language as cultural practice and its relation to sociolinguistic research. The concept of language as cultural practice evokes any number of important research trends in the ®elds of linguistic anthropo- logy, sociology, and cultural studies, to name a few, but nothing uniquely or explicitly sociolinguistic. Language as cultural practice perhaps begs the larger question of what sociolinguistics is as a ®eld of inquiry, as well as what the implications are for engaging in research that may be termed `sociolinguistic'. Of course, re¯ection on the location of the sociolinguistic opens up a whole array of additional questions concerning the nature and description of lan- guage, society and culture. Such is the heady stu of sociolinguistics. While this present review article is not an adequate forum in which to discuss the variety and depth of perspectives on these much-debated questions, at least two points seem relevant to placing cultural practice in a sociolinguistic context. First, sociolinguistics has oered in promise and practice a view (or multiple views) of language that transcends language as represented in the narrowly formalist and autonomous assumptions of traditionally-constituted linguistics. In this sense, language is inherently social and cultural ± the obvious but not trivial starting point of sociolinguistics. Second, `doing' socio- linguistics (or `being sociolinguistic', as identity plays a part here) can be conceptualized as a culturally ± and socially ± situated human activity (vs. a so-called autonomous exercise of scienti®c inquiry) on the part of practitioners that entails certain sensitivities, perspectives, and even responsibilities concern- ing the aective, institutional, socioeconomic, sociocultural, and educational implications and/or consequences of language in the lives of speakers.