Empirical linguistics meet psychology in this text, which argues that in order to understand more fully the words people produce, you need to understand how people perceive them. Particularly interesting to empirical linguists should be the different methods employed to document perception.

1. List of Figures; 2. List of Tables; 3. Series Editor's Introduction; 4. Acknowledgments; 5. Introduction (by Preston, Dennis R.); 6. I: The Dutch Contribution: 'Little Arrows'; 7. Informant Classification of Dialects (by Rensink, W.G.); 8. Dialects (by Daan, Jo); 9. The Netherlands-German National Border as a Subjective Dialect Boundary (by Kremer, Ludger); 10. II: The Japanese Controversy: 'Subjective' and 'Objective'; 11. Consciousness of Dialect Boundaries (by Sibata, Takesi); 12. Consciousness of Linguistic Boundaries and Actual Linguistic Boundaries (by Nomoto, Kikuo); 13. Dialect Consciousness and Dialect Divisions: Examples in the Nagano-Gifu Boundary (by Mase, Yoshio); 14. On Dialect Consciousness: Dialect Characteristics Given by Speakers (by Mase, Yoshio); 15. The Discussion Surrounding the Subjective Boundaries of Dialects (by Grootaers, Willem); 16. On the Value of Subjective Dialect Boundaries (by Weijnen, Antonius A.); 17. Dialects and the Subjective Judgments of Speakers: Remarks on Controversial Methods (by Goeman, Ton); 18. III: Images, Perceptions and Attitudes; 19. Classification of Dialects by Image: English and Japanese (by Inoue, Fumio); 20. Subjective Dialect Division in Great Britain (by Inoue, Fumio); 21. Geographical Perceptions of Japanese Dialect Regions (by Long, Daniel); 22. Mapping Nonlinguists' Evaluations of Japanese Language Variation (by Long, Daniel); 23. The Perception of Post-Unification German Regional Speech (by Dailey-O'Cain, Jennifer); 24. Variation and the Norm: Parisian Perceptions of Regional French (by Kuiper, Lawrence); 25. The Perception of Turkish Dialects (by Demirci, Mahide); 26. Regional Variation in Subjective Dialect Divisions in the United States (by Lance, Donald M.); 27. A View from the West: Perceptions of U.S. Dialects by Oregon Residents (by Hartley, Laura); 28. "Welshness" and "Englishness" as Attitudinal Dimensions of English Language Varieties in Wales (by Coupland, Nikolas); 29. Dialect Recognition (by Williams, Angie); 30. A Language Attitude Approach to the Perception of Regional Variety (by Preston, Dennis R.); 31. References; 32. Additional Readings; 33. About the Contributors and Translators; 34. Index