ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces language crossing by way of informant reports. It provides an outline of issues which are taken up in much greater detail in the analyses of spontaneous interaction. The chapter considers the interview accounts of crossing in Creole, Panjabi and Indian English. It aims to build up a comparative overview, giving an indication of the way informants discerned similarities and differences in the kinds of symbolic meaning offered by these three language varieties. The chapter addresses the following questions: what kinds of people were and weren't regarded as being involved in crossing; what attributes were they thought to project in their use of outgroup varieties; and how were they evaluated. It also aims to build up an account of how national and local conditions could affect the social meaning of other-ethnic language use. The chapter describes some of the disparate and conflicting 'sociolinguistic horizons' that potentially converged on adolescent speech.
