This monograph comprises eight papers, most of which originated as presentations given at international conferences or guest lectures. These papers deal with the problematic nature of English as a global language, and discuss what makes texts authentic and reliable for linguistic analysis, Scots in Ulster and in Scotland, forms and functions of English in Southeast Asia, the spread of rhyming slang, and varieties of ELT. The volume concludes with an annotated bibliography of the most important publications devoted to varieties of English around the world.

The great structural changes of the English language in the course of its history are taught in this textbook by continuous reference to translations of identical Biblical passages, which date from different periods and are printed in parallel. Analysis progresses from spelling and phonology to inflexion, word-formation, syntax, lexicology and semantics and ends with a chapter on foreign influences. Description is consistently based on functional-structuralist methods which provide the best tool for the didactic aim here envisaged. The book is intended for an introductory course into English...