Variation and Change in Postcolonial Contexts

J.K. (Jack) Chambers is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Toronto. He is co-editor of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (2013), co-author of Dialectology (1998) and author of Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance (2009). His articles include “Dialect Acquisition” (1992), “Sociolinguistics and the Language Faculty” (2005), “Geolinguistics of Literacy” (2010) and “English in Canada” (2013). He works extensively as a forensic consultant, and maintains a parallel vocation in jazz criticism, having also authored the prize-winning Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis (1998) and The Incomplete Works of Richard Twardzik (2008).

Gerhard Leitner is Professor of English Linguistics at the Free University of Berlin. He is the author of Englisch. Vom angelsächsischen Dialekt zur Weltsprache (2009); Die Aborigines Australiens (2006); Australia's Many Voices. Ethnic Englishes: Indigenous and Migrant Languages; Policy and Education (2004); and numerous contributions in specialized journals and volumes including Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, The Habitat of Australia's Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present and Future (2005), and Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2005).