American English: Dialects and Variation (Language in Society)

Rating:
Summary: Solid, not exhaustive
Review: A good, solid semi-introductory work on American Englishes. Not really intended for someone with absolutely no background in Linguistics, but a minimal introduction to the field should be enough. Its only real flaws are that there's a danger someone could take it to be exhaustive (I've even seen linguists who seem to believe this), and it's not quite as lively as Mencken's _The_American_language_, which may be dated but is still the best introduction to American Englishes that a non-linguist could read. (I should say, though, Wolfram and Schilling-Estes do a *much* better job than Mencken when dealing with socially marginalized varieties.)

Rating:
Summary: A Pendantic Bore of a Read
Review: The authors see their subject in a typically ivory tower, condescending way, and furthermore give conclusions based on the sketchiest evidence.

Rating:
Summary: Much more than just a description of American English
Review: The book offers much more than the title suggests. It is not only an up-to-date presentation of American English and its varieties ("white varieties," African American Vernacular English, Native American Vernacular English, and even Creole varieties). These varieties rather serve as sources of examples for a volume that covers virtually every branch of sociolinguistics, including even political issues and suggestions for dialect teaching and language reforms. The titles of the chapters are: "The Reality of Dialects," "Why Do Languages Have Dialects," "Levels of Dialect," "Dialects in the United States: Past, Present, and Future," "Regional Dialects," "Social and Ethnic Dialects," "Gender and Language Variation," "Dialects and Style," "The Patterning of Dialect," "On the Application of Dialect Studies," "Dialect Awareness in the School and Community"). The authors juxtapose a series of definitions, theories, and other issues in a fresh and sometimes untraditional manner, never forgetting to take the historical perspective into account. They are conscious of the problems inherent in generalizations and have managed to find the right middle course between a too simplistic and a too complicating presentation. At the end of each section the reader will find suggestions for further research and activities as well as further reading recommendations (including addresses of Internet sites, too). Another plus of the book is that the reading recommendations are accompanied by critical annotations. The main body is followed by an "Inventory of Socially Diagnostic Structures," which consists of a very informative list of linguistic structures and their correspondent variants in a number of American English dialects. At the end of the book the reader will also find a valuable glossary of (socio)linguistic terms. As already mentioned, it is very interesting to find out that some of the authors' statements break with the content, or structure, of many traditional works of this kind, such as the sub-definitions of 'standard,' or the observations on language use and pragmatics, much too often neglected elsewhere. The book is written in a very readable style and can warmly be recommended not only to teachers and students of languages and linguistics, but to everyone interested in sociolinguistic problems in the United States.