Table of Contents

Introduction April McMahon and Warren Maguire; Part I. Investigating Variation in English: How Do We Know What We Know?: 1. Collecting data on phonology Erik R. Thomas; 2. How to make intuitions succeed: testing methods for analysing syntactic microvariation Isabelle Buchstaller and Karen Corrigan; 3. Corpora: capturing language in use Alexandra D'Arcy; 4. Hypothesis generation Hermann Moisl; 5. Quantifying relations between dialects Warren Maguire and April McMahon; 6. Perceptual dialectology Chris Montgomery and Joan Beal; Part II. Why Does it Matter? Variation and Other Fields: 7. Variation and linguistic theory Patrick Honeybone; 8. Variation and change Gregory R. Guy; 9. Variation and forensic linguistics Frances Rock; 10. Variation and identity Emma Moore; 11. Variation and populations Rob McMahon; 12. Variation and education Graeme Trousdale.

Promotional Information

This book brings together a range of perspectives on the collection, analysis and broader relevance of variable language data.

About the Author

Warren Maguire is a Lecturer in English Language in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. April McMahon is Forbes Professor of English Language in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

'There are lots of things we don't know about variation in English, but the authors of this book know more than just about anyone!' Peter Trudgill, Agder University

'This book provides a broad overview of the study of variation in English. Contributions are concerned not only with the traditional issues of reliable data collection and appropriate methods of analysis, but also with the relevance of linguistic variation to linguistic theory and related areas of applied linguistics, population genetics and education. It will be a useful resource both for students of linguistics and for interested colleagues.' James Walker, York University, Toronto