Reviewed by Maria del Puy Ciriza, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This volume is a collection of thirteen articles related to the internal and external factors that affect dialect convergence (DC) and divergence (DD) in European languages. The editors begin with a general introduction, ‘The study of dialect convergence and divergence: Conceptual and methodological considerations’, which addresses the key concepts, main research questions, hypotheses, and methodological issues in the field of dialectology. The subsequent twelve chapters, which are a compilation of case studies about different European languages, are classified into three parts: Part 1 deals with internal factors that affect DC and DD, Part 2 focuses on macrosociolinguistic factors, and Part 3 centers on microsociolinguistic motivations.

In Part 1, ‘Convergence, divergence and linguistic structure’, Jeffrey L. Kallen (‘Internal and external factors in phonological convergence: The case of English /t/ lenition’) argues that language-external social factors, not language-internal phonetic processes, affect the direction of language change in the case of /t/ lenition in various dialects of English. In ‘Dialect/standard convergence, mixing and models of language contact: The case of Italy’, Gaetano Berruto finds Carol Myers-Scotton’s (Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in code switching, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) matrix language frame model inadequate to explain the situation of Italian dialects. Leonie Cornips and Karen Corringan (‘Convergence and divergence in grammar’) propose a combined variationist and generativist framework for analyzing dialectological processes at the grammatical level. They focus on the case of German and Dutch standard and regional dialects. Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, and Ann Williams (‘Phonology, grammar and discourse in dialect convergence’) recognize the lack of research at the discursive level of variation and present a comparative analysis of the phonetic, discursive, and syntactic patterns uncovered in three distinct British towns.

In Part 2, ‘Macrosociolinguistic motivations of convergence and divergence’, Inge Lise Pedersen illustrates the importance of historical, social, ideological, and economic processes in DC and DD in Scandinavian countries in ‘Processes of standardisation in Scandinavia’. Paul Kerswill and Peter Trudgill examine ‘The birth of new dialects’ in immigrant enclaves, focusing specifically on the case of New Zealandian English. In ‘Dialect convergence in the German language islands’, Peter Rosenberg examines patterns of DC and DD in various settlements of German-speaking communities, stating the importance of language-internal typological changes to explain dialect convergence. Curt Woolhiser (‘Political borders and dialect divergence/convergence in Europe’) considers the importance of political boundaries for DC and DD, giving the example from Belarusian speaking countries. In ‘The influence of urban centres on the spatial diffusion of dialect phenomena’, Johan Taeldeman studies urban dialects in Ghent and argues that, in addition to the factors proposed by the gravity model (Peter Trudgill, The social differentiation of English in Norwich, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), structural and sociopsychological factors are also relevant in the diffusion of language change.

In Part 3, ‘Microsociolinguistic motivations’, Tore Krinstiansean and Jens Normann Jørgensen present a case study of different Copenhagen dialects and discuss the relevance of attitudinal factors in language change in ‘Subjective factors in dialect convergence and divergence’. Juan Andres Villena Ponsoda (‘How similar are people who speak alike? An interpretive way of using social networks in social dialectology research’) studies the Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga through a quantitative network analysis, finding the approach adequate to account for language variation. Finally, Peter Auer and Frans Hinskens (‘The role of interpersonal accommodation in a theory of language change’) investigate language accommodation and state that the acts of identity model (Robert B. LePage & Andrée Tabouret-Keller, Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) can also function as an optimal model to explain how different subjects accommodate during interaction.

With its rich and varied perspectives of DC and DD, this volume offers an excellent panorama of the field and a fruitful source of case studies that apply different theoretical frameworks.