Peter Stockwell is Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and the author of many books and academic articles in the fields of literature and language, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, language and cognition, surrealism and literary theory. Peter is the editor of the Routledge English Language Introductions series.

Part 1: Introduction: Key Concepts in Sociolinguistics 1. A Sociolinguistic Toolkit 2. Accent and Dialect 3. Register and Style 4. Ethnicity and Multilingualism 5. Variation and Change 6. Standardisation 7. Gender 8. Pidgins and Creoles 9. New, National and International Englishes 10. Politeness and Accommodation 11. Conversation 12. Applying Sociolinguistics Part 2: Development: Studies in Language and Society 1. Undertaking a Sociolinguistic Study 2. Attitudes to Accent Variation 3. Euphemism, Register and Code 4. Code-Switching 5. Social Networks 6. Shifts in Prestige 7. Genderlects 8. Patwa and Post-Creolisation 9. Singlish and New Englishes 10. Politeness in Mixed-Sex Conversation 11. Phatics in Spoken Discourse 12. Language and Ideology Part 3: Exploration: Data for Investigation 1. Collecting and Exploring Data 2. Dialectal Variation 3. Register 4. Ethnology 5. Perceptions of Variation 6. Prestige 7. Gender 8. Creole 9. New English 10. Politeness 11. E-Discourse 12. Critical Discourse Analysis Part 4: Extension 1. Sociolinguistics and Language Change 2. Foreign Accents in America 3. Style and Ideology 4. Language Contact and Code-Switching 5. The Sociolinguist's Responsibility 6. The Process of Standardisation 7. Men's Language 8. The Origins of Pidgins and Creoles 9. World Englishes and Contact Literature 10. The Politics of Talk 11. Closing Turns 12. Linguistic Detection. Further Reading. References. Glossarial Index