Folk Linguistics provides an overview and analysis of what nonlinguists believe about language across a wide range of topics - dialectology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition (first and second), and even the more "theoretical" concerns of phonology, syntax, and semantics. It provides a rationale for the importance of such study, not only in its own ethnographic right but also in its importance to general and applied linguistics. The core of the book presents authentic (and carefully transcribed) conversations with a broad social spectrum of people from the northern Midwestern United States. The analysis focuses not only on the differences between nonlinguists', and linguists' views of language but also on the kinds of knowledge nonlinguists have about language and what folk theory of language stands behind such belief. The section on dialects contains the most recent findings in the subfield of folk linguistics known as "perceptual dialectology," and the sections on folk views of language education (particularly of minorities) are extensive. Of special interest to general linguists will be an entire section devoted to folk views of "grammaticality," including a lengthy folk discussion of the passive. In general, although linguists will be most familiar with the arrangement of topics here, anthropologists, social psychologists of language, folklorists, and others who deal with the intersection of language and social life will find a wealth of authentic data here and the beginnings of a more general account of not only the details but also the cognitive underpinnings of the ethnoscience of language.