West Midlands English: Birmingham and The Black Country forms part of the series Dialects of English which has so far included volumes on varieties such as: Urban North-Eastern English, Hong Kong English, Newfoundland and Labrador English, Irish English, Indian English, New Zealand English, Singapore English and Northern and Insular Scots. As such, it follows the general format of the series which covers the history and geography of a region, chapters on phonetics and phonology, grammar, lexis and a survey of previous works and bibliography. This contribution to the series follows this same general format and makes it applicable to the West Midlands region of the UK.

The first chapter deals with ‘Geography, Demography, Culture and Research Design’. This chapter describes why this volume focuses on Birmingham and The Black Country and why it misses out some counties which officially make up part of the West Midlands. The two regions which form the subject of this volume have linguistic varieties which are linked to very strong senses of identity and belonging, particularly as they are varieties which are generally viewed within the UK as a whole in a negative way. There are maps and tables which help illustrate the regions which form the focus of this volume. This is backed up with some historical information about the regions and the final part of this chapter explains how the data were collected and what was carried out in the projects which form the basis of this volume.

Chapters 2–4 analyse the linguistic features of these two varieties. In Chapter 2, the focus is on ‘Phonetics and Phonology’. The Birmingham and Black Country varieties are separately analysed using Wells' lexical sets (Reference Wells1982). Detailed data description is supplemented with quotes from speakers to illustrate points which are made. In Chapter 3, which examines ‘Grammar’, both varieties are discussed and particular emphasis is given to certain features of The Black Country such as the prepositional and conjunction system which vary greatly from Standard English. Throughout this chapter, references are made to other studies which have examined West Midlands English as well as quotes taken from interviews carried out by Clark and Asprey. The chapter on ‘Lexis’ deals with particular features which may be changing due to the decline of industries which employed many workers (including mining, glass-blowing and chain-making) as well as discussing lexical revitalization which seems to be taking place in the regions discussed. As some of the data collected as part of this project was made up by comic performances, it shows language being used in a self-reflexive way to represent the regions. This chapter contains particular lexical items collected using the SURE (The Survey of Regional Dialects) and SRNs (Sense Relation Networks) which have also been used in the examination of other local varieties (see Upton & Llamas, Reference Upton and Llamas1999).

The last two chapters examine previous surveys of the regions. In Chapter 5 ‘Surveys of Previous Works and Bibliography’, an overview is given of previous linguistic research in the region. There is also an extensive bibliography allowing researchers to follow up interests and queries following from this volume. The final, very short, chapter is entitled ‘Annotated Texts’ and this gives examples of language use from a small number of participants in the studies carried out as part of this project and comments on their language usage.

This volume is interesting to variationists and dialectologists at most levels and is particularly useful for allowing comparison between different varieties of English to be made. It is unlikely to be suitable for absolute beginners as there is no key to phonetic symbols or glossary of linguistic terms. Although there is mention in Chapter 1 of the linguistic diversity of the region, due to the large number of incomers, this is not discussed further in the volume, which would have been of great interest. However, this volume is of great interest to linguists wanting to learn more about variation in the West Midlands.