New Book: Preston

[John Benjamins Publishing Co.]

John Benjamins Publishing announces the availability of the following new book:

Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology.
Volume 1.
Dennis R. PRESTON, (ed.)
US & Canada: 1 55619 534 6 / USD 145.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of World: 90 272 2180 4 / NLG 290.00 (Hardcover)
Perceptual dialectology investigates what ordinary people (as opposed to
professional linguists) believe about the distribution of language
varieties in their own and surrounding speech communities and how they
have arrived at and implement those beliefs. It studies the beliefs of the
common folk about which dialects exist and, indeed, about what attitudes
they have to these varieties. Some of this leads to discussion of what
they believe about language in general, or "folk linguistics". Surprising
divergences from professional results can be found. For the professional,
it is intriguing to find out why and whether the folk can be wrong or
whether the professional has missed something.
Volume 1 of this handbook aims to provide for the field of perceptual
dialectology:
- a historical survey;
- a regional survey, adding to the earlier preponderance of studies in
Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States;
- a methodological survey, showing, in detail, how data have been acquired
and processed;
- an interpretive survey, showing how these data have been related to both
linguistic and other socio-cultural facts;
- a comprehensive bibliography.
The results and methods of perceptual dialectical studies should be
interesting not only to linguists, variationists, dialectologists, and
students of the social psychology of language but also to sociologists,
anthropologists, folklorists, and other students of culture as well as to
language planners and educators.
Contributions by: Dennis Preston; W.G. Rensink; Jo Daan; Ludger Kremer;
Takesi Sibata; Kikuo Nomoto; Yoshio Mase; Willem Grootaers; Antonius A.
Weijnen; A.C.M. Goeman; Fumio Inoue; Daniel Long; Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain;
Lawrence Kuiper; Mahide Demirci and Brian Kleiner; Donald M. Lance; Laura
Hartley; Nikolas Coupland, Angie Williams, and Peter Garrett.

John Benjamins Publishing Co.
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