Varieties of English Around the World (vols. G1–55, T1–9,1979–2015)

This volume presents fifteen original research papers by renowned specialists in their respective fields. A variety of research traditions are included, such as dialect geography and sociolinguistics, but also smaller sub-fields such as the study of slang and perceptual dialectology. Varieties studied include the South, the Eastern Seaboard, the Middle West, African American English, Cuban English, and others. A growing sense of unity in the discipline is reflected by recurring topics and methods across earlier boundaries between sub-disciplines. For instance, computerized data and statistical analyses are standard tools nowadays, and a few papers explicitly address the possibilities and limitations of these methods. The study of variation and change of linguistic varieties has largely replaced earlier, monolithic notions of dialect, and the question of change in dialects, the erosion of traditional speech forms under the impact of modern communication patterns and socio-economic developments, is investigated in several contributions. In general, a recent orientation towards the history and development of nonstandard varieties is reflected in the book — several papers study diffusion patterns of linguistic forms, or discuss the emergence of individual dialects or dialectal forms in a language contact framework. Altogether, the papers provide a lively illustration of and a fairly representative selection from ongoing high-quality linguistic research into American English.

Among the topics treated in this collection are the status of Scots as a national language; the orthography of Scots; the actual and potential degree of standardisation of Scots; the debt of the vocabulary of Scots to Gaelic; the use of Scots in fictional dialogue; and the development of Scots as a poetic medium in the modern period. All fourteen articles, written and published between 1979 and 1988, have been extensively revised and updated.

J. Derrick McClure is a senior lecturer in the English Department at Aberdeen University and a well-known authority on the history of Scots.

The continuing expansion of research in dialectology, sociolinguistics and English as a world language has made the field increasingly difficult to survey. This bibliography is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the relevant publications of the past few years. Like its predecessor, it will prove an indispensable reference book. The collection is in four parts, dealing respectively with general studies, Britain and Ireland, the United States and Canada, and the rest of the world. There is a joint index in which the 2800 entries are classified according to specific areas, ethnic groups and major linguistic categories, thus making the bibliography easy to use with the greatest profit. The present bibliography complements the one compiled by W. Viereck, E.W. Schneider and M. Görlach, which covered the period from 1965 to 1983 and was published in the same series in 1984.

This volume describes the English and English Creole of Trinidad and Tobago. Sources from the early 19th through late 20th centuries are gathered from a wide range of materials: novels, editorials, advertisements, cartoons, proverbs, newspaper articles, plays, lyrics of traditional songs and calypsos, and oral interviews. Many of the older texts are now made easily accessible for the first time. The introduction includes descriptions of the historical background, the sound system, grammar and vocabulary, speech styles, social and linguistic interaction of Creole and English, and implications for education and spelling. The older sources demonstrate much closer links to other Caribbean English Creoles than previously recognized. The texts and recordings of oral interviews are invaluable resources for researchers and teachers in linguistics, Creole Studies, Caribbean studies, literature, anthropology and history.

Problems of how to describe and explain the forms and functions of English outside Britain and the United States (and of varieties within the two countries) have become central for English linguistics over the past twenty years. The present collection combines 8 of Gorlach's major articles in the field written between 1984 and 1988. They range from methodological and state-of-the-art accounts to treatments of “colonial lag”, from lexicographical problems, and translations into pidgins and creoles to papers focussing on individual regions.

The volume consists of a substantial introduction, providing a geographical and historical outline of the area, an account of the origin of the area, an account of the origin of present-day southwestern speech varieties and a synopsis of their main features. This is followed by texts of three main types: brief selections from 17^th to 19^th century dialect writers, aimed at depicting characteristics of southwestern speech; longer 20^th century texts – verse, dialogue in novels; transcripts from tapes from 1950 onwards of speakers of different ages and social backgrounds. A part of each transcript is also provided in phonetic notation.

Chicano English can rightly be said to be, in its different varieties, the most widespread ethnic dialect of U.S. English, spoken by large sections of the population in the American Southwest. It represents a type of speech referred to by E. Haugen as a ‘bilingual’ dialect, having developed out of a stable Spanish-English setting. In their book, the authors provide a comprehensive examination of Chicano English, devoting particular emphasis to the social factors determining its characteristic features and uses. Special attention is given to the question of homogeneity as against ordered variation within Chicano English, to features of pronunciation and grammar, to its communicative functions, to the evaluative attitudes of its speakers and others and, finally, to its uses in literature and the media. In spite of its importance, Chicano English has been insufficiently documented; this monograph is intended to contribute towards redressing the balance.

After the growth of English and American dialectology since the 1930’s and the expansion of sociolinguistics since the 1960’s, the study of ‘world English’ has emerged in recent years to join these other disciplines. This bibliography is intended to reflect what has been achieved in this area and to serve as an indispensible research tool for further investigations. The bibliography is divided into three parts, each one is preceded by a preface which explains the procedures followed and each of the sections is followed by an index. It classifies the items according to specific areas, ethnic groups, or similar topics.

This volume is about the Anglophone creoles to be found on the Caribbean coast of Central America (Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama), and its offshore islands (Providencia, San Andrés and the Caymans) . The study of these Anglophone varieties is comparatively recent and based on current field work from Belize to Panama. One of the interesting features that emerges is the tentative map of diachronic and synchronic relationsships among the Anglophone creoles of the Caribbean, as illustrated partly by the lexicon and partly by grammatical constructions. The studies in this book are based on phonetic transcriptions of speech acts in their social and linguistic context.