This wide-ranging book, focused on the use of English as a lingua franca in intranational and international contexts, explores the ecologies in which interactions in English occur and the phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic processes that take place when speakers of different varieties of L2 English come into contact. For Meierkord, a key difference between intranational and international contexts is that in the former interactions tend to take place in relatively stable communities, circumstances which are more propitious for the adoption of new features and the eventual emergence of new L2 varieties; for example, the nativised varieties of post–colonial societies. In international contexts, by contrast, lingua franca encounters tend to be more short-term, and there is therefore less opportunity for the emergence, adoption and stabilisation of new features. Accommodation, rather, is one of the more common pragmatic responses. These, however, are rough generalisations, for throughout the book an important motif is heterogeneity: heterogeneity in the varieties of English entering into contact, heterogeneity in speaker characteristics such as their level of English proficiency, and heterogeneity in the purposes and contexts of the encounters.

The book divides into three main parts: one that outlines the theoretical frameworks informing the discussion and data analysis (chapters 3 and 4), a second that surveys the use of English in various historical, geographical and social settings (chapters 2, 5, and 7) and a third, based on Meierkord's original data, that investigates the linguistic processes occurring when speakers of different varieties of English interact (chapters 6 and 8). Sandwiching these contents are an introductory chapter that defines the scope and orientation of the book and a concluding chapter (chapter 9) that compares English in intra- and international contexts and briefly considers English on the internet.

Starting with the theory-oriented chapters, we find in chapter 3 a useful review of phenomena widely discussed in dialect/language contact studies (e.g. levelling, regularisation, reallocation, etc). Here Meierkord makes the important point that the theoretical apparatus of contact studies is not well suited to the short-term, fleeting encounters of many lingua franca interactions as opposed to ones that recur in more stable communities. There is thus a need for a framework that takes account of the social factors, or ecologies, that influence the nature of interactions – for example the intensity of contact between speakers, their relative statuses, their English proficiency levels and so on. The model Meierkord adopts as most suitable is Mufwene's (Reference Mufwene2001) ‘feature pool’, originally applied in pidgin/creole studies, according to which features of different varieties (in this case L2 varieties of English) enter into a pool from which speakers make selections – sometimes on an ad hoc basis. Such selections are conditioned by cognitive as well as social factors – for example, the prestige of particular features and the role features play in identity construction. The recurrent selection of the same features by a large number of speakers in a relatively stable community of speakers is, Meierkord argues, a necessary condition for the emergence of a new variety.

The review chapters (2, 5 and 7) discuss studies of English in various geographical and social settings around the world. Chapter 2 focuses on a quite disparate spread of topics: historical lingua francas (e.g. Malay, Quechua), the emergence of distinct varieties of English in Inner Circle countries such as Australia (see e.g. Kachru, Reference Kachru, Quirk and Widdowson1985), and ‘myths’ about English as a lingua franca – for example, that it serves only a restricted number of communicative purposes. In chapter 5 the focus falls on intranational contexts – the functions and forms of English in a wide range of Outer Circle (Kachru, Reference Kachru, Quirk and Widdowson1985) post-colonial societies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific (e.g. Nigeria, India, Fiji). Chapter 7 turns attention to the functions of English in international contexts and to the diverse types of community (academic, social, professional) that regularly interact in English. Together these three chapters bring together, and provide a useful overview of, a large number of studies of a diverse range of settings. The drawback, however, is that, because the scope is so wide, the treatment of particular settings and topics is inevitably limited in depth.

Chapters 6 and 8, based on Meierkord's own data, are perhaps the most interesting in that they examine closely the linguistic processes activated when speakers of different varieties of English interact. The data derive from an intranational setting (Cape Town, South Africa), involving contact between black and coloured speakers of different South African varieties of English (e.g. Black South African English, Cape Flats English), and from an international setting – a university hall of residence in the UK housing speakers from both the Outer and Expanding Circle. There is insufficient space here for a detailed discussion of Meierkord's findings, but one can say that in the Cape Town data there seem to be relatively few lexical borrowings from Afrikaans or Xhosa but considerable variability between speakers in the two grammatical variables studied, with educational background proposed as a significant conditioning factor. Meanwhile, the international data reveal relatively few lexical selections from the Englishes speakers bring to their encounters and a more restricted lexical repertoire than is found in some Anglophone L1 interactions. At the grammatical level most utterances appear to conform to British or American Standard English, while in discourse there is a tendency to greater explicitness, as is also documented in Mauranen (Reference Mauranen2012), but also a more constrained repertoire of conversational formulae than that reported for L1 speakers.

Readers will find this an interesting and enjoyable book, one that is particularly useful for the comparisons made between interactions in intra- and international contexts. There are a few flaws and frustrations, however. One wishes, for example, that there could have been more linguistic data and more of the kind of analysis found in chapters 6 and 8 and rather less of the survey material of chapters 5 and 7. The ambitious scope of the book is perhaps a drawback here. There might also have been greater reference, critical or otherwise, to the ELF literature. As it is, Meierkord's characterisation of ELF (p. 205) as an approach that ‘… . conceives of ELF as a variety of English that …should be taught’ is outdated and in need of revision. But that said, the insights on offer in this book are considerable and deserve attention.