This work provides an introduction to a range of ways of analysing language in context. It is accessible in that it assumes no previous knowledge on the reader's part, and guides students through detailed analysis. It also offers a hands-on approach to data analysis. The 24 data examples analysed are drawn from published work by experts in fields of language analysis. The analytic methods are drawn from sociolinguistics, sociocultural approaches, ethnography, multimodal approaches and discourse analysis. Contexts exemplified are drawn from education, the media, informal communication, new technologies, child youth and adult settings. The workbook includes a general introduction, followed by four main parts: Part 1 looks at approaches to spoken interaction; Part 2 covers approaches to written texts; Part 3 covers multimodal approaches; and Part 4 covers ethnographic approaches.