Reviewed by Will Barras, University of Edinburgh

This book is a worthy successor to Peter Trudgill’s 1984 edition of Language in the British Isles, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) taking account of changes in the intervening two decades. The structure of the book matches the 1984 edition, though some varieties and topics discussed in that edition are not treated separately here: Part 1 covers English; Part 2 discusses the Celtic languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales; Part 3 covers other languages spoken in the British Isles; and Part 4 discusses sociolinguistic issues of language policy and language in education. This edition succeeds in its stated aim of providing an overview of the languages spoken in the British Isles at the start of the twenty-first century. Notably, Part 3 is much extended in order to include languages that have arrived in the British Isles through recent population movement.

Part 1 begins with James Milroy’s account of the history of English in the British Isles. The emphasis on language mixing and borrowing effectively introduces the rest of the book. An account of standard and non-standard English by Paul Kerswill follows, which points out connections between social changes during the twentieth century and ideas of standard English. The rest of Part 1 adopts a mixed approach to documenting variation in English spoken in the British Isles. England is dealt with in two chapters: Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty write on phonological variation and David Britain covers grammatical variation. The following chapters take the reader on a geographical tour around the remainder of the British Isles: Paul A. Johnston, Jr. writes on Scottish English and Scots (the inclusion of Scots under the heading ‘English’ could be questioned, given that Scots has regional language status under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, a topic discussed in the chapter); Kevin McCafferty writes on Northern Irish English and Raymond Hickey on Southern; Robert Penhallurick writes on English in Wales; Andrew Hamer describes English on the Isle of Man; and Heinrich Ramish gives an account of English in the Channel Islands. These chapters are very readable and contain many references to more detailed descriptive literature.

Part 2 begins with Paul Russell’s account of the history of Celtic languages in the British Isles. The following chapters address each geographical variety in turn: Kenneth MacKinnon’s chapter is on Gaelic, Pádraig Ó Riagáin writes on Irish and Martin Bell on Welsh. These chapters discuss aspects of language planning and policy in addition to providing linguistic descriptions of the languages.

At the start of Part 3, Mark Gibson’s account of multilingualism sits very well with points made in Milroy’s earlier chapter on the history of English; Mark Sebba writes on Caribbean creoles and Black English; Mike Reynolds and Mahendra Verma discuss Indic Languages; Li Wei describes Chinese as spoken in the British Isles; Penelope Gardner-Chloros discusses European immigrant languages; Bencie Woll and Rachel Sutton-Spence discuss sign languages; Mari C. Jones writes on Channel Island French; and Peter Bakker and Donald Kenrick discuss Angloromani. Many of these languages, in particular those of European immigrants to the British Isles, have not been discussed frequently in earlier descriptive literature.

Part 4 includes a chapter on language policy and planning by Dennis Ager and one on non-standard English and education by Ann Williams. Ben Rampton, Roxy Harris, and Constant Leung write on education provision for speakers of languages other than English, providing a detailed discussion of education policy in England since the 1984 edition.

This is a wide-ranging and ambitious book that reflects the sheer range of topics that could be included in a discussion of language in the British Isles.