This book has a threefold purpose. Firstly to provide the reader with a comprehensive handbook comparing American English to British English with regard to spelling, sounds, and lexical items. Thus, the reader has at his or her fingertips material that might otherwise have to be extracted from many texts, or from diverse places in one individual grammar. Secondly, to describe some aspects of American culture that are related to language, for instance by discussing paralinguistic and extralinguistic phenomena, speaking and conversational styles/modes etc. Thirdly, one section is devoted to varieties of American English, namely some of the social and geographic dialects of the United States. Tromsø-studier i språkvitenskap 6.