Paul Kerswill – författare

Recent models of dialect contact, notably in the work of Trudgill, Chambers, James Milroy, and Labov have stressed the importance of the notions of salience, simplification, linguistic complexity, and the speech community in accounting for the patterns that arise. In this case-study of the speech of rural migrants in the Norwegian city of Bergen, Paul Kerswill critically examines the usefulness of these concepts, and puts recent models of dialect contact to the test for the first time against a case of such contact as it is actually happening.Dialect contact often, it is said, leads to Koineization - the emergence of new, mixed varieties of a language resulting from the intermingling of speakers of different varieties of that language. Kerswill investigates the extent to which processes of change typically ascribed to Koineization are already prefigured in the speech of the first-generation adult migrants of this study.While the author's approach is broadly quantitative he also demonstrates the importance of ethnographic and social-psychological explanations in accounting for the wide differences between individuals in the study. He argues for a sociolinguistic methodology founded on a richer and more comprehensive view of the social factors influencing, langague use.

Dialects are constantly changing, and due to increased mobility in more recent years, European dialects have 'levelled', making it difficult to distinguish a native of Reading from a native of London, or a native of Bonn from a native of Cologne. This comprehensive study brings together a team of leading scholars to explore all aspects of recent dialect change, in particular dialect convergence and divergence. Drawing on examples from a wide range of European countries - as well as areas where European languages have been transplanted - they examine a range of issues relating to dialect contact and isolation, and show how sociolinguistic conditions differ hugely between and within European countries. Each specially commissioned chapter is based on original research, giving an overview of work on that particular area and presenting case studies to illustrate the issues discussed. Dialect Change will be welcomed by all those interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, the relevance of language variation to formal linguistic theories, and European languages.

Dialects are constantly changing, and due to increased mobility in more recent years, European dialects have 'levelled', making it difficult to distinguish a native of Reading from a native of London, or a native of Bonn from a native of Cologne. This comprehensive study brings together a team of leading scholars to explore all aspects of recent dialect change, in particular dialect convergence and divergence. Drawing on examples from a wide range of European countries - as well as areas where European languages have been transplanted - they examine a range of issues relating to dialect contact and isolation, and show how sociolinguistic conditions differ hugely between and within European countries. Each specially commissioned chapter is based on original research, giving an overview of work on that particular area and presenting case studies to illustrate the issues discussed. Dialect Change will be welcomed by all those interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, the relevance of language variation to formal linguistic theories, and European languages.

This volume provides a systematic comparative treatment of urban contact dialects in the Global North and South, examining the emergence and development of these dialects in major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and North-Western Europe. The book’s focus on contemporary urban settings sheds light on the new language practices and mixed ways of speaking resulting from large-scale migration and the intense contact that occurs between new and existing languages and dialects in these contexts. In comparing these new patterns of language variation and change between cities in both Africa and Europe, the volume affords us a unique opportunity to examine commonalities in linguistic phenomena as well as sociolinguistic differences in societally multilingual settings and settings dominated by a strong monolingual habitus. These comparisons are reinforced by a consistent chapter structure, with each chapter presenting the linguistic and social context of the region, information on available data (including corpora), sociolinguistic and structural findings, a discussion of the status of the urban contact dialect, and its stability over time. The discussion in the book is further enriched by short commentaries from researchers contributing different theoretical and geographical perspectives. Taken as a whole, the book offers new insights into migration-based linguistic diversity and patterns of language variation and change, making this ideal reading for students and scholars in general linguistics and language structure, sociolinguistics, creole studies, diachronic linguistics, language acquisition, anthropological linguistics, language education and discourse analysis.

The second edition of this hugely successful textbook provides comprehensive coverage of a wide range of topics in theoretical and applied linguistics. Written by leading academics in the field, this text offers a firm grounding in linguistics and includes engaging insights into current research. It covers all the key areas of linguistic analysis, including phonetics, morphology, semantics and pragmatics, and core domains of study, comprising the history of the English language, regional and social variation, style and communication and interaction. Fresh material on research methods outlines key areas for consideration when carrying out a research project, and provides students with the framework they need to investigate linguistic phenomena for themselves.This is an invaluable resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students on English language and linguistics degree programmes. New to this Edition:- Seven new chapters covering topics such as second language acquisition, corpus linguistics and research methods- A number of chapters have been substantially revised, including those on World Englishes, Literacies in Cyberspace and TEFL, TESOL and Linguistics- Fully updated throughout to reflect the latest advances in the field