ABSTRACT
The first section of the conclusion chapter summarizes the main results of the book, with Section 2 discussing contributions to Dublin and Irish English, male identities and the sociolinguistics of sport, and indexicality and social meaning before finally dealing with ethnography. I assess the implications of the key findings in light of existing studies and literature. The book contributes to a better understanding of the social and interactional functions of linguistic variation; an important consideration of the methodological framework is the mapping of linguistic variants to several levels (micro, meso, and macro) of social reality simultaneously. This study of a sports club clearly exemplifies the ways men signal closeness interactionally and linguistically. The implementation of sociolinguistic perspectives in sport contexts illuminates the relationship between semiotic practices circulating in modern culture and linguistic variation.
