Legitimate language : giving a history to English / Jim Milroy -- History of the lesser-known varieties of English / Peter Trudgill -- 'North of Watford gap' : a cultural history of Northern English / Katie Wales -- History of southern hemisphere Englishes / Elizabeth Gordon and Andrea Sudbury -- 'Deformed in the dialects' : an alternative history of non-standard English / Shana Poplack, Gerard Van Herk and Dawn Harvie -- Building a new English dialect : South African Indian English and the history of Englishes / Rajend Mesthrie -- Story of good and bad English in the United States / Dennis R. Preston -- From polite language to educated language : the re-emergence of an ideology / Richard Watts -- Eloquence and elegance : ideals of communicative competence in spoken English / Sharon Millar -- Women's writings as evidence for linguistic continuity and change in Early Modern English / Terttu Nevalainen -- Discourse markers in Early Modern English / Andreas H. Jucker -- Broadcasting the nonstandard message / David Crystal