New publishing models and increased interest in "popular science" books have converged to make it increasingly viable for linguists to write language-based trade books focusing on regional and social speech varieties. In order for such books to reach a broad audience, authors must make writing choices that are quite dissimilar from those made when writing for academic peers. In this article, we examine a number of recent sociolinguistic trade books and consider the effects of the authors' choices on the effectiveness in engaging and conveying technical information to non-academic audiences. From our investigation of issues of audience, prose, images, citations, etc., emerge some guidelines that might help others be more successful in appealing to a popular readership. Though we offer no prescriptions, we hope that our investigation begins a conversation of best practices for engaging the public in linguistic investigations of regional and social speech varieties via trade books. In doing so, we also examine issues related to research ethics and the value in the academy of trade books specifically and linguistic gratuity projects in general.

Although Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s eloquence as a speaker is widely recognized and his rhetorical strategies have been extensively studied, no analyses have been conducted on his language variation in different speech settings. This article examines a set of variable structures in King's speech to determine how it indexes his regional, social, and ethnic identity as he accommodated different audiences and interactions. The use of unstressed (ING), medial and final /t/ release, postvocalic nonrhoticity, coda-final cluster reduction, copula/auxiliary absence, the vowel system, and syllable timing are considered for four different speech events: the “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), the Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964), a conversation with talk-show host Merv Griffin (1967), and the “I've Been to the Mountaintop” speech (1968). The analysis indicates stability across speech events for some variables and significant variation for others based on the speech event. His indexical profile indicates that he consistently embodied his Southern-based, African American preacherly stance while fluidly shifting features that indexed performance and formality based on audience, interaction, and intentional purpose. His language embraced ethnolinguistic tradition and transcended linguistic diversity, modeling linguistic equality in practice.

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