Trudgill's lively book traces the histories of dialects and accents, and defends the legitimacy of the language of ordinary people.

Is Ebonics really a dialect or simply bad English? Do women and men speak differently? Will computers ever really learn human language? Does offensive language

'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' The prophetic words of Galadriel, addressed to Frodo as he prepared to travel from Lothlorien to

This important contribution to the sociolinguistics of Asian languages breaks new ground in the study of language standards and standardization in two key ways: