International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English (The English Language Series)

By Jean Hannah and Peter Trudgill

Book Overview

Over the years since first publication in 1982, International English has established its place as the only text which gives a good overview of the linguistics characteristics of varieties of English around the world. In order to keep up with research that has been conducted over the past 6 years, the authors have completely reworked and rewritten their chapter on the Caribbean/ The book now also includes a new chapter on "lesser-known Englishes" covering those varieties spoken in such places as the Channel Islands, Bermuda, and the Bahamas as well as African countries such as Botswana and Namibia. This new material, coupled with a thorough updating of the remaining text and references ensures that the book will remain a favourite and indispensable resource for teachers and students for many years to come.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0340808349
• ISBN13: 9780340808344
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Hodder Education Publishers
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.1" x 0.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Manifold impressions of Standard English varieties

The book presents an illustrative overview of standard varieties of English and (English-based creoles) around the world. It departs from the two main standard varieties, English English and American English, and contrasts all other varieties of standard English with these two, showing tendencies of divergence (phonology) and convergence (grammar, lexis). The major part of the volume is dedicated to differences between English English and North American English. More than other introductions to varieties of English Trudgill/Hannah deal with differences in language use (aside from differences in the language system). They include a survey of usage and stylistic differences with prepositions, auxiliaries, verb phrase substitutions, articles, pronouns etc. The book doesn't get 5 stars, however, for two reasons: (1) The authors don't give the sources for their (statistical) results; they don't say what corpus has been analyzed, nor do they show exactly (in figures) how salient a statistical difference between varieties is (which would enable the reader to decide whether there is a true difference, whether other sociolinguistic factors are more salient etc.); (2) Certain pragmatic areas like politeness strategies and differences related to text-types (which also belong to language use) are neglected. All in all, however, the authors' approach is a pragmatically well-chosen one, which makes the book recommendable to both natives and non-natives, and to both students and teachers of English.