History of Late Modern Englishes

Keith Johnson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Language Education in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster, UK.

'For both students and teachers, Keith Johnson’s History of Late Modern Englishes is a godsend. The book adopts a refreshingly modern, sociolinguistic approach to its subject matter, exploring English in all its varieties. Like its masterful predecessor The History of Early English, it is written in an accessible and entertaining way, and its well-constructed and engaging exercises encourage students to make discoveries about English for themselves. A "must" for my course reading list!'David Hornsby, University of Kent, UK'While scholarly discussions of LModE have grown considerably since the turn of the millennium, it has been much less frequent to come across student-centred discussions of what present-day Englishes owe to their historical past. By focussing on geographical variation across time, this book outlines some important ways in which English has changed over the last three centuries.'Marina Dossena, University of Bergamo, Italy

• 1. Into the middle of things2. ‘Ascertaining English’: the eighteenth century3. The nineteenth century: English, standard and non-standard4 A short interlude about variety5. ‘A tongue of small reach’: England6. ‘A tongue of small reach’: Wales, Scotland, Ireland7. ‘Immigrants goes to America’: English in North America8. A world apart?: Australia and New Zealand9. Wider still and wider 10. Pidgins, Creoles, and Tok Pisin: a ‘ghastly mutilated English’? 11. Worldwide12. English: a language with a past . . . and a future?GlossaryReferencesIndex