Background
He was born in Norwich, England, where he attended the City of Norwich School from 1955.
He was born in Norwich, England, where he attended the City of Norwich School from 1955.
Trudgill studied modern languages at King"s College, Cambridge and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in 1971.
Before becoming professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Essex he taught in the Department of linguistic science at the University of Reading from 1970 to 1986. He was professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1993 to 1998, and then at the University of Fribourg, also in Switzerland, from which he retired in September 2005. He is now (3rd September 2008) part-time professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway, and adjunct professor at the Research centre for linguistic typology at Louisiana Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, as well as honorary professor at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.
He has carried out linguistic fieldwork in Britain, Greece and Norway, and has lectured in most European countries, Canada, the United States, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Fiji, Malawi and Japan.
Trudgill is a well-known authority on dialects, as well as being one of the first to apply Labovian sociolinguistic methodology in the United Kingdom, and to provide a framework for studying dialect contact phenomena. Trudgill is also the author of Chapter 1 ("The Meanings of Words Should Not be Allowed to Vary or Change") of the popular linguistics book "Language Myths" that he co-edited.
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters]
He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and a Fellow of the British Academy.