Reviews

The article discusses language as a form of social differentiation and the importance of its recognition as such within social work. Structural and ideological barriers to the recognition of linguistic identity within the UK context are explored, before focusing on additional language tuition and the benefits of its use as an awareness raising tool, drawing from socio‐linguistics literature and applying it to social work education.

Research points to the necessity of the development of a ‘third place’ between a native and target linguistic culture to permit a greater depth of understanding of multicultural and multilingual contexts. It is argued that culturally competent language tuition, when used beyond an exercise in communicative competence or bilingual resource development, has great potential in terms of developing anti‐discriminatory practice past a monolingual framework, and allowing monolingual practitioners to discover their own linguistic identities, and reach their own ‘third place’.