The obscure sociolinguistics and variation books are never popular on the ol' LibraryThing, but this one deserved better than two (now three) copies catalogues, because it is a good generalist introduction to the spread of English and its status at the resent day from a "World Englishes" perspective, which is a good context for people like me working on North American dialects--the Indians and ?Chinese will own our language soon enough. Anyway, a lot of the fine classificatory cuts Mesthrie and Bhatt make between immigrant Englishes and pidgins and creoles and jargons and ESL and EFL and ENL and EAL are a bit dry, a bit glossary, showing an emphasis on form at expense of useful content, for my taste, and Kachru's concentric circles model, which M and B cite approvingly, seems to me correct as far as it goes but overblown in terms of how interesting it actually is, but I will say that they take Schneider's five-step model of English spread (foundation, exonormative stabilization, etc.) and explain it far better than Schneider himself managed to. So if you're interested in how new varieties form, you could give this one a look for context.

(nb did not read cover to cover. used for ma scholarly pursuits) ( )