Talking Young Femininities explores the spontaneous talk of adolescent British girls from different socio-cultural backgrounds, including girls from a prestigious private school, the British Bangladeshi community and the East End in London. The book examines different discursive practices and identities which the young women negotiate in their talk and examines the interactive processes of these negotiations.

• What do young British women talk about with their friends?
• How do gender and (adolescent) identity interact with social class and ethnicity?
• How do adolescent girls position themselves in relation to sexual experiences, practices and identities?
• What is the relationship between the girls' local positions and larger-scale socio-cultural norms or identity categories?
• In what way can linguistic discourse analysis build on and contribute to cross-disciplinary research on gender and adolescent identity?

These questions are explored on the basis of the girls' conversations about friends, friendships, boys, parents, music, drugs, school, sex, (arranged) marriage and social class.

Acknowledgements
Transcription Conventions
Girls' Talk as a Resource for Identity Construction
PART I: TALKING YOUNG FEMININITIES: IDENTITY AND THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN GENDER, ETHNICITY AND SOCIAL CLASS
Cool and Socially Aware Private School Girls
Sheltered But Independent East End Girls
Tough and Respectable British Bangladeshi Girls
PART II: SEX TALK AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF YOUNG FEMININITIES
Self-disclosing Sex Talk: self-determined Girls
Playful Sex Talk: 'Good Girls' and 'Bad Girls'
Impersonal Sex Talk: Knowing Girls
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

PIA PICHLER is a Lecturer in Linguistics at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She has published work in the area of language and gender and on the linguistic construction of identity, with a particular focus on the interplay of local identity practices with gender, ethnicity and social class. She is co-editor of Gender and Spoken Interaction.