American English : Dialects and Variation

This book provides a very readable, up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences.

• contains new chapters on social and ethnic dialects, including a separate chapter on African American English and more comprehensive discussions of Latino, Native American, Cajun English, and other varieties,


• includes samples from a wider array of US regions


• features updated chapters as well as pedagogy such as new exercises, a phonetic symbols key, and a section on the notion of speech community


• accessibly written for the wide variety of students that enrol in a course on dialects, ranging from students with no background in linguistics to those who may wish to specialize in sociolinguistics

Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, and author or co-author of 17 books and over 250 articles, including The Development of African American English (with Erik Thomas, Blackwell 2002) and American Voices (edited with Ben Ward, Blackwell 2006).

Natalie Schilling-Estes is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is co-author of Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue (with Walt Wolfram, 1997) and co-editor of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (with J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, Blackwell 2002).