Reviewed by Mark J. Elson, University of Virginia

For purposes of review, it is convenient to divide the ten chapters of this book thematically into three groups: the structure and history of American English (including matters of usage); variation within it; and language policy in the United States, including American English as a second language. Although the treatment of language policy is satisfactory (if politicized), there is little attempt at an impartial discussion of language planning as such. The imposition of standard languages is a world-wide phenomenon; its occurrence in the United States requires contextualization, not to excuse or justify the imposition of English, but to make students aware of the phenomenon and its consequences more generally.

In contrast to the treatment of policy, that of structure, history, meaning/usage, and variation is weak, even for an introductory text. The inadequacy is twofold: too little detail and explanation, especially in linguistic theory, to enable the reader to advance to material treating the data in more detail; and too little attention to American English as such, particularly the structural attributes of the standard language, as opposed to other varieties of American English and other standard Englishes. Thus, the discussion of generative grammar (91–97), which the authors oppose to prescriptive and descriptive approaches, is too sparsely presented and out of date to be of pedagogical value. Moreover, very little of the treatment of the phonology, grammar, syntax, and to some extent the history of Standard American English (SAE) would not appear in a book on other standard Englishes. Nor does the authors’ general description of SAE (28–30; 91) succeed in clarifying the concept of standard language, its relationship to prescriptivism (84–86), or the status of SAE in American society. Instead, we find questionable claims like ‘SAE has become the expected norm for communications in a public forum, such as the government, education, or media’ (29); this might have been defensible as recently as a decade ago, but the chatty register adopted by the authors for their book itself demonstrates it is questionable now. Their reference to more than one variety of SAE (91) is also questionable.

Finally, the authors belabor the definition of American English only to avoid the obvious definition suitable for beginners, i.e. the English spoken natively in the United States and Canada, supplemented by important structural traits distinguishing American English from English spoken elsewhere. The historically based definition they propose (36) adds nothing useful or enlightening to the discussion. The details of adaptation over time that form the focus of the authors’ definition do not change the fact that no one doubts the existence of American English as a synchronically identifiable variety that therefore needs a synchronic definition.

In addition to weaknesses in content, those considering adoption of this book should also be aware of the existence of questionable phraseology throughout; e.g. ‘Sometimes American English vowel sounds include diphthongs’ (110), in which either ‘include’ is used for ‘are’ or ‘diphthongs’ is misused for ‘glides’. Such carelessness is especially regrettable for marring the clarity expected of an introductory textbook.