Author Description

Individual chapters cover the full international range of English dialects, from the centre of Sydney to the shores of Newfoundland, and from the Scottish borders to the Appalachian Mountains. Soundly based on empirical research, they are rich in data of great interest in itself, but no article is merely descriptive. The editors have selected papers for their value in contributing to the reader's broader understanding of the theoretical issues concerning dialectology as a whole. As a result, dialectology is presented as a major scholarly discipline drawing creatively on such areas as linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, geography and even philosophy.