'English Accents and Dialects' is a unique introductory survey of the main regional and social varieties of English spoken in the British Isles. The authors discuss accent and dialect in the broader framework of language variation, including phonetic, phonological, grammatical, lexical, historical and stylistic differences. This is followed by a survey of the speech of twelve different areas of the British Isles. The cassette which accompanies the book consists of edited interviews (all transcribed in the book) with speakers from each of the different areas.



The third edition has been thoroughly revised and includes an entirely new chapter on Received Pronunciation. Following a general description the authors discuss variations within RP and consider some of the factors which account for this variation. The cassette now includes recordings of three different varieties of RP speech. Entirely new sections, with corresponding recordings, have been added on Lowland Scots, Devon and Dublin speech.