Are UK sociolinguistics and US linguistic anthropology converging, or are they held apart by fundamental differences in their histories, self-images and positioning in their national academies? And where does linguistic ethnography figure in this? This meeting will take the introductions to two recent readers as points of departure for the discussion: Duranti, A. 2009. ‘Linguistic anthropology: History, ideas and issues’. Chapter 1 in Duranti (ed) Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Second Edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 1-60; And Coupland, N. & A. Jaworski 2009. ‘Social worlds through language’. Chapter 1 in Coupland & Jaworski (eds) The New Sociolinguistics Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 1-21