First published in 1988. Arabic linguistics is developing into an increasingly interesting and important subject within the broad field of modern linguistic studies. The scope of this discipline is wide and varied, covering diverse areas such as Arabic phonetics, phonology and grammar, Arabic psycholinguistics, Arabic dialectology, Arabic lexicography and lexicology, Arabic sociolinguistics, the teaching and learning of Arabic as a first, second, or foreign language. The present work by Prochazka is the first general survey of the dialects of Saudi Arabia covering a wide range from north to south recording of linguistic variation in that vast region. It is particularly strong in covering a number of localities in the southwest and it is the first linguistic study of the dialect of the Ruwala bedouin of the northern desert. The work reveals a major division into two areal blocks: (i) the southern Hijaz and Tihamah and (ii) the Najdi and Eastern Arabian dialects.

This book studies the uses of the dialect known as Hiberno-English in the works of several canonical Irish writers of the twentieth century: James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, George Bernard Shaw and Brian Friel. Irish writers of this period faced the challenge of creating a literature in English that would be independent of the English literary tradition. The use of Hiberno-English is both a literary device and a practice that bears on the question of an Irish national identity. This work examines above all the uses of Hiberno-English as a literary device. One of the potential functions of a literary text is to call into question received ideas, and the texts discussed here do this with the help of Hiberno-English. Here, this dialect stands as a form of authenticity which is questioned and through which received ideas are criticised. This book also contains a large corpus whose primary purpose is to record the abundance of Hiberno-English in the works under review. The corpus provides a gloss and outlines the grammatical and phonetic features of Hiberno-English.

First published in 1987, this atlas identifies structural patterns which exist in the sound systems of the dialects of England. It regards variation, not as something to be ignored or avoided, but as a central and essential feature of dialect, which must be accounted for in a systematic way. The study identifies some of the more prominent structural boundaries between dialect areas and argues that discrete boundaries do not exist: rather there are a number of areas separated by bands of dialects in which conflicting partial systems exist.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique study of language. The book provides an invaluable insight into social history, with the British vocabulary dating back to the 16th century and the American to the late 18th century. Each entry comes complete with the approximate date of origin, the etymology for each word, and a note of the milieu in which the expression arose.

First published in 1942, this dictionary was designed to help civilians and members of H.M. forces to make their way amid the jungle of wartime abbreviations. The preface notes that newspaper readers, sailors, soldiers and airmen had to thrust themselves, like explorers, into these abbreviations in search of truth, or the execution of their martial duty and hence, a dictionary was necessary. This book will be of interest to scholars of history and language, as well as the more general, interested reader.

This re-issue of Julian Franklyn's classic dictionary not only defines these expressions but also explains their origin and history. An introductory essay examines the roots and development of rhyming slang. Although many people assume that rhyming slang is exclusively Cockney, Franklyn illustrates how it is common to Australian and Americn dialects.
From the unlikely to the bizarre, the 1,500 entries both entertain and enlighten. Cartoons enliven a reference section which combines linguistic detail and cultural analysis. Whether reading the dictionary from cover to cover, or dipping into it as a reference tool, linguists and students of popular culture will find it the definitive source of information on rhyming slang.

This book examines language and identity among White American middle and upper-middle class youth who affiliate with Hip Hop culture. Hip Hop youth engage in practices that range from the consumption of rap music and fashion to practices like MC-ing (writing and performing raps or "rhymes"), DJ-ing (mixing records to produce a beat for the MC), graffiti tagging, and break-dancing. Cutler explores the way in which these young people stylize their speech using linguistic resources drawn from African American English and Hip Hop slang terms. She also looks at the way they construct their identities in discussions with their friends, and how they talk about and use language to construct themselves as authentic within Hip Hop. Cutler considers the possibility that young people experimenting with AAVE-styled speech may improve the status of AAVE in the broader society. She also addresses the need for educators to be aware of the linguistic patterns found in AAVE and Hip Hop language, and ways to build on Hip Hop skills like rhyming and rapping in order to motivate students and promote literacy.

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source

The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang.

Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work.

Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include:

• unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean
• emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English
• published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term s use in print.
• hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords
• dating information for each headword
• in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term s origins and meaning

New to this edition:

• A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years
• Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia
• New terms from the language of social networking
• Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses

The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning it s rude, it s delightful, and it s a prize for anyone with a love of language.

In addition to this hard back two volume set, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English will also be the first slang dictionary available on-line, giving readers unprecedented access to the rich world of slang. For details, including hardback plus on-line bundle offers, please visit www.partridgeslangonline.com "

This volume, composed mainly of papers given at the 1999 conferences of the Forum for German Language Studies (FGLS) at Kent and the Conference of University Teachers of German (CUTG) at Keele, is devoted to differential yet synergetic treatments of the German language. It includes corpus-lexicographical, computational, rigorously phonological, historical/dialectal, comparative, semiotic, acquisitional and pedagogical contributions. In all, a variety of approaches from the rigorously 'pure' and formal to the applied, often feeding off each other to focus on various aspects of the German language.

Keep your swearing as fresh as a f*cking daisy with The Little Book of Profanities. There's nothing better than that perfect swear word. In a battle of wits, it can make all the difference. And, like all things in life, variety is the spice of swear words. Why call someone a d*ck, when a choad is so much more - satisfying. Stuffed with 100 of the obscene, offensive and outrageous swear words known to construction workers all over the world, The Little Book of Profanities encourages you to flex and stretch your foul-mouthed muscles so when that awesome opportunity to use a big, hairy curse word arises you're not hoisted by your own petard. In these uncertain and challenging times of political and social chaos, when all you want to do is shout obscenities at the world for being crap, The Little Book of Profanities is here to help you survive the day in style. Swearing - it's big, it's clever and anyone who thinks otherwise can f*ck off. 'The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a f*cking lunatic.' Stephen Fry on the joy of swearing, as seen on theguardian.com, 20 August 2007, by Sam Wollaston. Fact: The word's etymology can be traced back to around 450AD when scite (dung), scitte (diarrhoea) and scitan (to defecate) were all thrown about. Sh*t evolved millennia later into schitte (excrement) and shiten (to defecate). Example: 'Life is a crap carnival with sh*t prizes.' - Stephen King.

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics.The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

The Cambridge Thesaurus of American English is an original and up-to-date collection of over 200,000 synonyms and antonyms for the most commonly used words and phrases in contemporary American English. Compiled by renowned expert on American language use and author of Doublespeak, William Lutz, the Thesaurus is alphabetically arranged, and designed to give the user quick access to a coherent set of synonyms and antonyms. The Cambridge Thesaurus provides a brief list of common, usable synonyms organized according to their frequency of use and their meaning. In those cases where the distinction between senses of a word is not clear, a brief definition is provided. Any synonyms that are slang or that have restricted usage are clearly labeled to that effect. Concise and readable yet complete and reliable, The Cambridge Thesaurus will be the ideal desktop reference for high school and college students, office personnel, and anyone else in search of that perfect word.

This book is the first comprehensive, research-based description of the development, structure, and use of Welsh English, a contact-induced variety of English spoken in the British Isles. Present-day accents and dialects of Welsh English are the combined outcome of historical language shift from Welsh to English, continued bilingualism, intense contacts between Wales and England, and multicultural immigration. As a result, Welsh English is a distinctive, regionally and sociolinguistically diverse variety, whose status is not easily categorized. In addition to existing research, the present volume utilizes a wide range of spoken corpus data gathered from across Wales in order to describe the phonology, lexis, and grammar of the variety. It includes discussion of sociolinguistic and cultural contexts, and of ongoing change in Welsh English. The place that Welsh English occupies in relation to other Englishes in the Inner and Outer Circles is also analysed. The book is accessible to the non-specialist, but of particular use to scholars, teachers, and students interested in English in Wales, Britain, and the world. It provides an unparelleled resource on this long-standing and vibrant variety.

Social scientists have used the term "Creolization" to evoke cultural fusion and the emergence of new cultures across the globe. However, the term has been under-theorized and tends to be used as a simple synonym for "mixture" or "hybridity." In this volume, by contrast, renowned scholars give the term historical and theoretical specificity by examining the very different domains and circumstances in which the process takes place. Elucidating the concept in this way not only uncovers a remarkable history, it also re-opens the term for new theoretical use. It illuminates an ill-understood idea, explores how the term has operated and signified in different disciplines, times, and places, and indicates new areas of study for a dynamic and fascinating process.

Singlish is the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore. It has sparked much public debate, but so far the complex question of what Singlish really is and what it means to its speakers has remained obscured. This important work explores some of the socio-political controversies surrounding Singlish, such as the political ideologies inherent in Singlish discourse, the implications of being restricted to Singlish for those speakers without access to standard English, the complex relationship between Singlish and migration, and the question of whether Singlish is an asset or a liability to Singaporeans. These questions surrounding Singlish illustrate many current issues in language, culture and identity in an age of rapid change. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of World Englishes and sociolinguistics. Its detailed analysis of the Singlish controversy will illuminate broader questions about language, identity and globalization.

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.

The description of minority or threatened languages with a view to documenting the linguistic consequences of language contact and restriction has now emerged as a distinct area of investigation within sociolinguistics. In this book, Raymond Mougeon and Edouard Beniak present a series of analyses of the impact that contact with English on the one hand, and language-use restriction on the other, have had on the evolution of the French dialect spoken in the predominantly English-speaking province of Ontario, Canada. As a background to the analyses, the authors provide sociohistorical and sociolinguistic information on the Franco-Ontarian community, and make comparisons with other varieties of French both within and outside North America. They address fundamental theoretical issues such as the interplay between linguistic and extralinguistic causes of structural change and the mechanisms of linguistic change in bilingual as opposed to unilingual speech communities.

This volume brings together a multiplicity of voices--both theoretical and practical--on the complex politics, challenges, and strategies of educating students--in North America and worldwide--who are speakers of diverse or nonstandard varieties of English, creoles, and hybrid varieties of English, such as African American Vernacular English, Caribbean Creole English, Tex Mex, West African Pidgin English, and Indian English, among others. The number of such students is increasing as a result of the spread of English, internal and global migration, and increased educational access. Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education offers: *a sociohistorical perspective on language spread and variation; *analysis of related issues such as language attitudes, identities, and prescribed versus actual language use; and *practical suggestions for pedagogy. Pedagogical features: Key points at the beginning of each chapter help focus the reader and provide a framework for reading, writing, reflection, and discussion; chapter-end questions for discussion and reflective writing engage and challenge the ideas presented and encourage a range of approaches in dealing with language diversity. Collectively, the chapters in this volume invite educators, researchers, and students, across the fields of TESOL, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, English, literacy, and language education, to begin to consider and adopt context-specific policies and practices that will improve the language development and academic performance of linguistically diverse students.

So far, no comprehensive study of the obsolescence of Scandinavian loanwords in English has ever been published. This book remedies that situation, and presents an analysis of the causes of obsolescence of Scandinavian loanwords in English since the 15th century. The study has mainly been based on the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary. Over 300 loanwords have been selected, grouped into semantic fields and analysed. To account for their disappearance, reasons such as the rivalry of synonyms, the exclusive use in local dialects, the disappearance of the referent as well as rare occurrence or phonological changes were investigated.

Linguistic varieties such as female speech, foreigner talk, and colloquial language have not gone unnoticed when it comes to Classical Greek, but little is known about later periods of the Greek language. In this collective volume leading experts in the field outline some of the most important varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, basing themselves on a broad range of literary and documentary sources, and advancing a number of innovative methodologies. Close attention is paid to the linguistic features that characterize these varieties, with in-depth discussions of lexical, morpho-syntactic, orthographic, and metrical variation, as well as the interrelationship between these different types of variation. The volume thus offers valuable insights into the nature of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, laying the foundation for future studies of linguistic variation in these later stages of the language, while at the same time providing a point of comparison for Classical Greek scholarship

This book describes dialect differences in American English and their impact on education and everyday life. It explores some of the major issues that confront educational practitioners and suggests what practitioners can do to recognize students' language abilities, support their language development, and expand their knowledge about dialects. Topics addressed include: *popular concerns about the nature of language variation; *characteristic structures of different dialects; *various interactive patterns characteristic of social groups; *the school impacts of dialect differences in speaking, writing, and reading, including questions about teaching Standard English; and *the value of dialect education in schools to enable students to understand dialects as natural and normal language phenomena. Changesin the Second Edition: In this edition the authors reconsider and expand their discussion of many of the issues addressed in the first edition and in other of their earlier works, taking into account especially the research on dialects and publications for audiences beyond linguistics that have appeared since the first edition. This edition is offered as an updated report on the state of language variation and education in the United States. Dialects in Schools and Communities is rooted in questions that have arisen in workshops, surveys, classes, discussion groups, and conversations with practitioners and teacher educators. It is thus intended to address important needs in a range of educational and related service fields. As an overview of current empirical research, it synthesizes current understandings and provides key references-in this sense it is a kind of translation and interpretation in which the authors' goal is to bring together the practical concerns of educators and the vantage point of sociolinguistics. No background in linguistics or sociolinguistics is assumed on the part of the reader. This volume is intended for teacher interns and practicing teachers in elementary and secondary schools; early childhood specialists; specialists in reading and writing; speech/language pathologists; special education teachers; and students in various language specialties.

"The Survey of English Dialects" (SED) presents information from a detailed nation-wide dialect survey. It represents a repository of data on the traditional dialects of England in the mid-20th century. This record should be a valuable resource for scholars in the fields of British English dialectology, sociolinguistics, and English historical linguistics. The fieldwork for the survey was undertaken in predominantly rural communities in England at a time when social, domestic and working life was undergoing very significant changes. The survey therefore represents a record of speach which reflects a society different in many ways from today's, and as such affords the possibility of comparison which is instructive to those engaged in all types of study of linguistics today. SED is available as a complete set, or in the following volumes and parts: Introduction 0-415-18508-4; Volume 1: Six Northern Counties and the Isle of Man - Volume 1, Part 1 0-415-18509-2; Volume 1, Part 2 0-415-18518-6; Volume 1, Part 3 0-415-18511-4; Volume 2: The West Midlands - Volume 2, Part 1 0-415-18512-2; Volume 2, Part 2 0-415-18513-0; Volume 2, Part 3 0-415-18514-9; Volume 3: The East Midland Counties a