This book is a concise (socio)linguistic overview of New Zealand (NZ) English, the only variety of English for which there is recorded evidence of its entire history. Chapter 1 introduces the geographic, demographic, and sociocultural factors that have shaped NZ's history. Notwithstanding its diverse population (Maori, European settlers, Pacific Islanders, Asians), NZ is a predominantly monolingual country with two national languages, English (spoken by 98% of the population) and Maori (spoken by 4.6%). Against this backdrop, the next three chapters deal with the features of NZ English that render it a distinctive variety. Chapter 2 taps into its highly researched phonetics and phonology by investigating the pronunciation of consonants (such as /l/, /r/, /t/) and vowels (e.g. the ones in the KIT and NURSE word classes), sound changes in progress (like h-dropping or the recently arrived tr-affrication), as well as some suprasegmental features (e.g rising pitch at the end of non-question utterances). Chapter 3 focuses on the under-researched morphosyntactic features of NZ English. Here the interesting ones include the use of the past participle by young NZers in contexts where past tense would be expected (e.g. I done it instead of I did it) and the use of modal verbs, negation, verbal agreement, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs. Regarding the latter, young people's preference for really as opposed to very indicates rapid change in intensifiers. Chapter 4 delves into NZ English vocabulary and discourse features. Its vocabulary is 95% common with the rest of the English speaking world, while only 5% of words are distinctive “New Zealandisms.” The diverse sources of this vocabulary include Maori words, especially for naming flora and fauna (e.g. fantail is piwakawaka) and Maori society and culture, but some Maori words are anglicized (e.g. the town Paekakariki is shortened to Pie-cock). Regarding NZ English discourse features, noteworthy is the use of the tag particle eh and the use of like both as a quotative and discourse marker. Moreover, discourse analysis of Maori and Pakeha conversational styles points toward the former's favoring of positive politeness strategies and solidarity markers. Chapter 5 accounts for the origins of NZ English. The basic argument is that this variety was developed within the country as a new dialect rather than transported from elsewhere. Chapter 6 analyzes regional and sociolinguistic variation within NZ, claiming that there is less than in other English-speaking countries because of the contact among NZ areas and the lack of a rigid social class structure. Chapter 7 summarizes the most important scholarly literature on NZ English, while chapter 8 contains transcripts of some NZ English sample texts.

Overall, this is a well-written book and thus accessible to its targeted audience of nonspecialists interested in NZ English. Nevertheless, it lacks some key references in the bibliography, such as Bell's article “Back in style” (in Rickford & Eckert, Style and sociolinguistic variation, Cambridge University Press 2001), and the user-friendly web page under which the sound files of the transcripts in chapter 8 are found is given erroneously: The correct one is http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects/nz.html.