A fascinating survey of English both as a pre-eminent world language in its standard British and American forms and as a family of increasingly diverse regional varieties.

Tom McArthur argues that:

Organized by continent, the Oxford Guide to World English contains chapters on Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australasia, Oceania, and Antarctica. Tom McArthur takes note of the world's many varieties of English in an interconnected way and covers the ties that bind varieties and regions that happen to be geographically far apart, as with, for example: West African English and African American English; Scots, Ulster Scots, the Scotch-Irish migrations to Appalachia in the US, and country and western music; and aspects of Australian, New Zealand, South African, and Falklands English as southern-hemisphere varieties.

A concluding chapter studies the nature and power of large languages; such issues as gender and political correctness; the role, status, and nature of broken and/or fractured English; the worldwide English language teaching industry; and the issue of standardness, considered both locally and globally.

The Oxford Guide to World English will be published

on 30 May 2002 at £19.99 (Hardback).