The renaissance of corpus linguistics and promising developments in experimental linguistic techniques in recent years have led to a remarkable revival of interest in issues of the empirical base of linguistic theory in general, and the status of different kinds of linguistic evidence in particular.

Fully revised and updated, the second edition of this authoritative guide to modern English is a comprehensive, scholarly and systematic review of modern English. In one volume, the book presents a description of both the linguistic structure of present-day English and its geographical, social, gender and ethnic variations.

In several respects, linguistic stylistics is the purest form of stylistics, in that its practitioners attempt to derive from the study of style and language a refinement of models for the analysis of language and thus to contribute to the development of linguistic theory. Work in linguistic stylistics is generally less accommodating to the aims of non-linguistic disciplines and is thus, when applied, most likely to provoke reservations about its relevance.

Recent developments in the European integration process have raised, amongst many other things, the issue of linguistic diversity, for some a stumbling block to the creation of a European democratic polity and its legal and social institutions. The solution to the 'question of language', involves an understanding of the role played by natural languages and the consequent design of policies and institutional mechanisms to facilitate inter-linguistic and intercultural communication. This is not an exclusively European problem, and nor is it entirely new, for it is also the problem of linguistic majorities and minorities within unitary nation-states. However, the effects of globalization and the diffusion of multiculturalism within nation-states have given renewed emphasis to the question of language in diverse societies. Facing the question anew involves reconsidering traditional ideas about social communication and the public sphere, about opinion-formation and diffusion, about the protection of cultural and linguistic minorities, and about the role that language plays in the process of formation of political and legal cultures. This volume is intended as a multidisciplinary contribution towards studying and assessing the range of problems that form the 'language question' in Europe and diverse societies.