This book is the second volume of the Handbook of perceptual dialectology. Expanding on the coverage of both regions and methodologies, its aim is to underline the importance of considering folk (i.e., non-linguists') conceptions and perceptions of and responses to dialect phenomena in general, and to language differences in particular. Perceptual dialectology, or even “folk dialectology,” is nowadays understood – thanks to the work pioneered by Dennis Preston over the past two decades – as a multidisciplinary macro-linguistic and micro-sociolinguistic approach within the field of folk linguistics, an enterprise that, in general, gives added prominence to both linguistic structure and details of dialect production and perception differences and attitudes, complementing the more global approach of the social psychology of language. As we know, an important aspect of the complex social psychology of speech communities is the arbitrary and subjective intellectual and emotional response of the members of a society to the languages and varieties in their social environment: Different language varieties are often associated with deep-rooted emotional responses – in short, with social attitudes, such as thoughts, feelings, stereotypes, and prejudices about people, about social, ethnic and religious groups, and about political entities. These non-linguists' emotional responses and perceptions of dialects and dialect divisions may, paradoxically, not coincide with those proposed by linguists, since cultural, social, political, economic, or historical facts or other circumstances within the speech community may lead to the belief that there is a linguistic boundary or a sociolinguistic barrier where in reality there is none, or vice versa. Crucially important, then – as Preston's work has emphasized – is the comparison of scientific and folk characterizations of sociolectal and/or geolectal varieties and areas. Such an approach builds a more complete and accurate picture of the speaker's linguistic behavior, in the context of its complex social psychology, as well as of the regard for language use and variety within the community, in our sociolinguistically based search for an understanding of the dynamics of speech communities.

The vigorous development of the field is brilliantly illustrated in this book both theoretically and methodologically, with a number of recent and ongoing research projects in perceptual dialectology. As Ronald Butters points out in the Preface, this volume “reifies and expands upon the underlying principles of folk linguistics and at the same time extends the methodological applications into new regions, new languages, and the perceptions of their speakers” (p. xvi). Most chapters are excellent instances of what is referred to in the Introduction as the “overwhelming influence of essentially nonlinguistic facts on the perception of linguistic ones” (p. xx).

To this end, the editors provide us with case examples from languages as diverse as Korean, Japanese, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Dutch, Norwegian, and German, as well as Mandingo and Mali varieties. They all deal with non-linguists' views of areal linguistics and using those techniques developed and refined by Preston for the field in the 1980s: draw-a-map, degree of difference, “correct” and “pleasant,” dialect identification, and qualitative data (Preston 1999:xxxiv). These examples are presented in the form of language boundary perceptions, the aesthetics and prestige of dialects, attitudes toward language, dialect and accent varieties, gender differences, mental maps, dialect imitation, dialect distance, nativeness, and difference perceptions.

The book contains 20 chapters, together with the Preface by Butters, the editors' Introduction, notes on contributors, and name and subject indexes. The chapters range from 8 to 32 pages, depending on the complexity of the linguistic phenomena presented.

“Miami Cuban perceptions of varieties of Spanish” (chap. 1) by Gabriela Alfaraz and “Regional differences in the perception of Korean dialects” (chap. 14) by Daniel Long & Young-Cheol Yim provide exemplary cases of the impact that nonlinguistic facts have on the perception of linguistic phenomena, particularly historical-political effects on the perception of dialect differences. Both works examine perceptions and attitudes toward varieties of Spanish and Korean, respectively, by eliciting evaluative data (correctness and pleasantness) through the application of a scaled questionnaire. The context for Cuban Spanish is practical political implications of the pre- and post-Castro Cuban societies, and that for Korean is the North and South Korean societies and their linguistic varieties.

In chap. 2, “Aesthetic evaluation of Dutch: Comparisons across dialects, accents and languages,” Renée van Bezooijen focuses on the distinction between inherent and contextually conditioned value judgments of language varieties. She studies their cognitive recognition and aesthetic evaluations by testing the validity of the hypotheses of inherent value (sound-driven), imposed norm (norm-driven), and social connotations (context-driven), together with other factors such as intelligibility, similarity, and familiarity. Her results and conclusions, which point to the most positive aesthetic evaluations for the standard language, underline the usual wrong relationship established between the standard/nonstandard duality and the issues of correct versus incorrect, adequate versus inadequate, or aesthetic versus unaesthetic, respectively.

Cécile Canut's “Perceptions of languages in the Mandingo region of Mali: Where does one language begin and the other end?” (chap. 3) is a brilliant investigation of an age-old question. Canut states that “spatial delimitation of dialects cannot be an efficient parameter in the study of dynamic linguistics” and provides us with the most likely alternative: “The objective is no longer to describe abstract entities (language), so-called fixed and rooted systems situated one next to the other, but rather to show that communicative practice is composed of an ensemble of varying subsystems in contact and in the process of permanent transformation and evolution” (p. 39), perhaps something like the accumulative transition of colors in the continuum of a rainbow.

A number of chapters, in addition to Van Bezooijian's, show socially based differences (gender, class, age, education, etc.) in the evaluation and perception of regional dialects: chap. 2; “Gender differences in the perception of Turkish regional dialects” (chap. 4), by Mahide Demirci; “Mental maps: Linguistic-geographic concepts” (chap. 5), by Willy Diercks; “Attitudes of Montreal students towards varieties of French” (chap. 6), by Betsy Evans; “A perceptual dialectology of Anglophone Canada from the perspective of young Albertans and Ontarians” (chap. 15), by Meghan McKinnie & Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain; “California students' perceptions of, you know, regions and dialects?” (chap. 8), by Carmen Fought; “Where is the ‘most beautiful’ and the ‘ugliest’ Hungarian spoken?” (chap. 12), by Miklós Kontra; “Madrid perceptions of regional varieties in Spain” (chap. 16), by Juliana Moreno Fernández & Francisco Moreno Fernández; “Attitudes toward Midwestern American English” (chap. 17), by Nancy Niedzielski; and “A perceptual dialect study of French in Switzerland” (chap. 19), by Caroline L'Eplattenier-Saugy. Social interference in linguistic perception is revealed in the analyses of Turkish dialects, a small area of northern Germany, Montreal French, Albertan and Ontarian English in Canada, views of U.S. linguistic diversity, Hungarian dialects, Peninsular Spanish dialects, and French in Switzerland, respectively; they use respondents' hand-drawn maps and/or perceptions of correctness, pleasantness, and degree of difference. Similar assumptions, goals, and conclusions are found in Maria Teresa Romanello's “The perception of urban varieties: Preliminary studies from the south of Italy” (chap. 18), where the scene and object of evaluation are interestingly transferred from regions and dialect varieties to urban spaces and urban varieties in the south of Italy, studying the linguistic facts of the local community. The paper by the Moreno Fernández constitutes the first research on attitudes to regional varieties carried out about the Peninsular Spanish facts, where the language, dialect, and accent diversity, together with the perceptions and responses to them through the speakers' value judgments, are motivation enough for a monographic special issue.

In “An acoustic and perceptual analysis of imitation” (chap. 7), using the matched guise technique and advanced, sophisticated acoustic tools, Betsy Evans deals with dialect perception from the perspective of adult imitative ability by comparing and analyzing the various subsystems of the informant's normal and imitative speech styles. Her revealing conclusions suggest that previous notions about adult abilities to acquire new varieties of the same language and bidialectalism should be reconsidered. The study specifically addresses the “control” dimension of perceptual dialectology, one of the modes of awareness proposed by Preston 1996 together with “availability,” “accuracy,” and “detail,” in part an attempt to extend Trudgill's (1986) notion of “salience.”

In “Perception of dialect distance: Standard and dialect in relation to new data on Dutch varieties” (chap. 9), Ton Goeman underlines the crucial role that perceptual-attitudinal factors play in changes in progress with his statistical modeling of some specific Dutch dialect features, stating that “the subjective evaluation of ‘own’ and ‘foreign’ is an important factor in language behavior besides other language internal and language external factors” (145).

Another set of chapters focuses on dialect recognition and/or identification of a speaker as a native member of a given speech micro- and macro-community through specific linguistic differences in dialect contact and mixture situations (e.g., Bergen in Norway, Milton Keynes, Hull and Reading in England, Noirmoutier Island in France, and Tokyo): “A dialect with ‘great inner strength’?: The perception of nativeness in the Bergen speech community” (chap. 10), by Paul Kerswill; “Dialect recognition and speech community focusing in new and old towns in England: The effects of dialect leveling, demography and social networks' (chap. 11), by Paul Kerswill & Ann Williams; “Microcosmic perceptual dialectology and the consequences of extended linguistic awareness: A case study of Noirmoutier Island (France),” by Jean Léo Léonard; and “Influence of vowel devoicing on dialect judgements by Japanese speakers” (chap. 20), by Midori Yonezawa.

Most chapters contain richly detailed ethnographic and sociolinguistic approaches which are correlated with specific linguistic phenomena. They all underline the importance of complementing linguists' insights about “scientifically discovered aspects of language structure and use” (Preston 1996:72) with the systematic study of non-linguists' opinions, as suggested by Preston in his seminal earlier work. Understanding perceptions of languages, language varieties, and specific features of these varieties, as Schilling-Estes (2002:18) points out, “is important for both scientific and humanistic reasons: not only does such understanding provide insight into such central linguistic issues as the relationship between perception and production and the role of saliency in language variation and change, but it also allows for fuller understanding of how and why people's attitudes toward language varieties are often translated into attitudes toward, and discrimination against, speakers who use particular varieties.” In addition, language attitudes also contribute to language maintenance or death.

The presence of some spelling mistakes and the occasional need for editing work in some chapters written by authors who are not native speakers of English by no means tarnish the excellent quality of the volume compiled and edited by Long & Preston. They provide us with an excellent summary of current issues and trends in folk dialectology, accounted for very insightfully and critically, with substantial contributions from innovative and informative points of view. The book is as readable and enlightening as it is well documented and thought-provoking, in leading toward a “folk theory of language,” and it will be of great interest to a wide multidisciplinary range of readers – dialectologists, sociolinguists, ethnographers, applied linguists, and other social scientists. The editors must be credited fully for this second compilation, which completes a first-rate two-volume ensemble on perceptual dialectology.