Teachers will find this book useful both for self-study and teaching. The linguist-authorsintroduce nonspecialist readers to the rich landscape of local and parochial ways of speaking thatstill exist in the United States, despite the uniforming pressures from the language of the nationalmedia and leveling effects on language of individual mobility. They account for linguistic factsof differences between dialects (in chapters 1 and 2 and the appendix) and also between differentdiscourse styles (chapter 3). They do this with respect for differences between people. A majorpurpose of the book is to counter misconceptions that dialect speakers are somehow deficient.They are not, of course. They are anchored in the local community or group, and this localgrounding is socially-psychologically sound and represents a very positive value indeed; or fromanother neutral perspective, they simply talk differently. Dialects are good or different, but neverbad, unless people think others are bad just because they talk differently. The book helps anyreader shed such groundless prejudice.