This study assesses the potential of using conversation analytic methodology to investigate syntactic variation in New Englishes. It analyses transcripts and audio files of face-to-face interactions between speakers of Caribbean and Southeast Asian Englishes and illustrates how syntax provides essential clues allowing interactants to project upcoming places of speaker change. Current speakers might adapt their turns underway to avoid transition to a next speaker, but speaker groups differ when it comes to which syntactic constructions they prefer in this context. As these interactional preferences seem to correlate with linguistic preferences (such as a high frequency of topicalization), the present study suggests that they constitute a case of emergent grammar, and hence should be considered a factor in investigating syntactic variation.

‘Lesser-known varieties of English’ (Schreier, 2009; Schreier et al., 2010) have received increasing attention in the last decade. In particular, Englishes on islands with historical and political ties to the United Kingdom or the United States have been described, such as the varieties in Bermuda (Eberle, 2021), Samoa (Biewer, 2020), and Tristan da Cunha (Schreier, 2009). However, Madeira has hitherto received extraordinarily little attention, although it used to be home to a small but enormously influential group of British expatriates who controlled large parts of the economy and owned a considerable amount of land on the island. Even today, approximately 1,000 emigrants from the United Kingdom live permanently in Madeira, which constitutes the second largest group of foreign residents (DREM, 2020b: 11). ‘Madeira’ refers to both a Portuguese archipelago and this archipelago's main island located ca. 737 km west of Morocco's coast (see Figure 1). Overall, Madeira had a population of 267,785 in the last official census from 2011 and is a highly popular tourist destination, with roughly 8 million overnight stays by visitors in 2019 (DREM, 2020a).

Turn-taking is a fascinating feature of conversational interaction, due to its systematic and ordered nature. However, research has so far focused mainly on American and British conversations, with other varieties of English receiving much less attention. This pioneering book addresses this gap by exploring turn-taking patterns and cultural variation in Southeast Asian and Caribbean English. Bringing together research from the fields of Conversation Analysis and World Englishes for the first time, Neumaier conducts an empirical study based on authentic audio data of interactions in these global varieties of English, and demonstrates that conversational strategies differ between speaker groups with different cultural backgrounds. Shedding new light on the impact of cultural and sociolinguistic factors on conversational patterns, it is essential reading for advanced students and scholars interested in language, variation, and social interaction, as well as those working in the fields of Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics, and World Englishes.

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