Alternative Histories of English

Richard Watts is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Berne, Switzerland. Peter Trudgill is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

'This book is quite innovative. It seeks to promulgate, and rightly so, the history of nonstandard varieties of English as contributing to our overall knowledge of the development of the language ... I can recommend this publication for those interested in English as well as Englishes.' - Alan S. Kaye, Multilingua'This volume is an excellent introduction to the issues ... it is extremely commendable that all authors have worked very hard to make their contributions readable to an audience which inevitably has little prior knowledge of the area ...' - International Journal of Applied Linguistics

• Introduction: in the year 2525, Prologue 1 The legitimate language: giving a history to English PART I The history of non-standard varieties of English 2 The history of the lesser-known varieties of English 3 ‘North of Watford gap’: a cultural history of Northern English (from 1700) 4 The history of southern hemisphere Englishes 5 ‘Deformed in the dialects’: an alternative history of non-standard English 6 Building a new English dialect: South African Indian English and the history of Englishes 7 The story of good and bad English in the United States PART II The history of communicative and pragmatic aspects of English 8 From polite language to educated language: the re-emergence of an ideology 9 Eloquence and elegance: ideals of communicative competence in spoken English 10 Women’s writings as evidence for linguistic continuity and change in Early Modern English 11 Discourse markers in Early Modern English 12 Broadcasting the nonstandard message