Professor Peter Trudgill (born 1941 in Norwich, England, UK) is a sociolinguist, academic and author. He grew up in Norwich where he attended the City of Norwich School from 1951.

Trudgill studied Modern Languages at King's College, Cambridge. He was later awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1971. He taught in the Department of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading from 1970 to 1986 before becaming Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Essex. He was Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Lausanne from 1993 to 1998, and is now teaching Linguistics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He has carried out linguistic fiedlwork 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. Peter Trudgill is the Honorary President of the Friends of Norfolk Dialect society, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Trudgill is a well-known authority in slang and dialects. His works include:

• Applied Sociolinguistics
• Dialects in Contact
• Language Myths (with Laurie Bauer)
• Introducing Language and Society
• English Accents and Dialects (with Arthur Highes)
• International English (with Jean Hannah)
• The Dialects of England
• Bad Language (with Lars Andersson)
• On Dialect
• Language in the British Isles
• Dialectology (with J. K. Chambers)
• Accent, Dialect and the School