Journal of Sociolinguistics. 2019;00:1–5. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/josl | 1 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd DOI: 10.1111/josl.12362 BOOK REVIEW CRITICAL SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH METHODS: STUDYING LANGUAGE ISSUES THAT MATTER Monica Heller | Sari Pietikänen | Joan Pujolar New York: Routledge. 2018. 208 pp. Pb (9781138825901) £26.39, Hb (9781138825895) £88.00, Ebook (9781315739656) £16.50. Monica Heller, Sari Pietikäinen, and Joan Pujolar co‐authored this introductory textbook in sociolin- guistics designed for the novice researcher. The volume is a significant departure from related works, directing sociolinguistic research agendas towards explorations and examinations of the linguistic and ethnographic resources that illuminate issues of power and inequality in the context of our current sociopolitical climate. The volume is well‐organized and accessible to novices in language and society research while still offering important theoretical and methodological insights on sociolinguistics and related fields of research on language issues that matter. Not only do the authors offer methodologi- cal insights into how to do sociolinguistic research, they also share insights into why sociolinguistic research is an important practice in understanding the important role language plays in the everyday lives of speakers, communities, and institutions. Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods enters a growing field of texts introducing meth- ods in experimental sociolinguistics (Drager, 2018) and linguistic ethnography (Snell, Shaw, & Copland, 2015), practical guides to research methods in sociolinguistics (Holmes & Hazen, 2014), and “how to” texts in data collection (Mallinson, Childs, & Van Herk, 2018), to name just a few. The distinction between Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods and the other texts is the authors’ insistence on focusing on why language matters to speakers and their communities. By doing so, they make compelling arguments for why critical research in sociolinguistics provides valuable insights into social justice issues today. The other texts focus on methods and descriptive products that may lead to understanding language per se but are less effective in explaining why language is an interactional activity speakers deploy to address everyday inequalities in sociolin- guistic life. Heller, Pietikäinen, and Pujolar draw extensively from their own research in triangulating research methods across linguistic contexts and particular situations. Themes of nationalism, authenticity/rep- resentation, and gender echo throughout the text as leitmotifs of why language matters. The metaphors of rhizome and forest are serviceable as orienting devices to capture the complexity of interconnect- edness of language and social contexts. Rhizomes, as densely interconnected root systems or neural networks, convey “an epistemological metaphor for a dynamic, non‐linear system of knowledge pro- duction, located in a multiplicity of connected processes… a representation of knowledge that can ac- count for resilience, heterogeneity, interconnectivity and multiplicity among the nexus in a network” (p. 15). Similarly, “the topic of your research is the forest that you need to know well enough to be