Further Studies in the Lesser-Known Varieties of English

Description

This volume follows on from The Lesser-Known Varieties of English (Cambridge, 2010), by documenting a further range of varieties that have been overlooked and understudied. It explores varieties spoken by small groups of people in remote regions as diverse as Malta, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles, Brazil, the Cook Islands, and Palau. The varieties explored are as much a part of the big picture as major varieties and it is the intention of this collection to spark further interest in the sociolinguistic documentation of minority Englishes in a postcolonial world. Language endangerment is a very real factor for the vast majority of lesser-known varieties of English, and this book aims to highlight that documentation and archiving are key initial steps in revitalization and reclamation efforts. This book will be of interest to historians of English, and scholars in dialectology, language birth and death, language contact, typology, and variation and change.

Jeffrey P. Williams is Professor of Anthropology at Texas Tech University. He previously taught at the University of Sydney and Cleveland State University. Most recently he edited The Aesthetics of Grammar: Sound and Meaning in the Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2014). Edgar W. Schneider is Professor and Chair of English Linguistics at Universitat Regensburg, Germany. He has published and lectured on all continents on topics in the dialectology, sociolinguistics, history, and semantics of English and its varieties. He edited the scholarly journal English World-Wide for many years and has written and edited about twenty books, including Handbook of Varieties of English (2004, 2008), Postcolonial English (Cambridge, 2007) and English around the World (Cambridge, 2011).

'[Further Studies in the Lesser-Known Varieties of English] proves wrong the commonly held assumption that linguistic heterogeneity is a property of large urban populations and provides an excellent starting point for sociolinguistic, contact linguistic and linguistic anthropological research projects that will unearth more detailed insights into the dynamics of language use outside of the urban western context.' Bettina Megge, Journal of Sociolinguistics '... an extremely important survey and documentation of understudied global Englishes. The volume achieves its goal of being an appropriate overview of many of these seemingly incongruous systems, being both accessible and consistent for a scholarly audience that seeks to understand how global Englishes develop in various postcolonial, post-imperial and national contexts.' John K. McCullough, The LINGUIST List