Further Studies in the Lesser-Known Varieties of English

Jeffrey P. Williams · Edgar W. Schneider · Peter Trudgill · Daniel Schreier

Apr 2015 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

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 Universität 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).