The UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum (UKLEF) brings together researchers conducting linguistic ethnography in the UK and elsewhere. It seeks to explore a range of past and current work, to identify key issues, and to engage in methodologically and theoretically well-tuned debate.

Linguistic Ethnography holds that language and social life are mutually shaping, and that close analysis of situated language use can provide both fundamental and distinctive insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of social and cultural production in everyday activity.

UKLEF is a Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL). UKLEF is linked to two research training programmes funded by the Economic and Social Research Council:

• Researching Multilingualism (2010-2013)
• Ethnography, Language and Communication (2007-2010)