'The contributions are informed, up-to-date and lucid, and many of them make unusual - in fact, unprecedented - efforts to present opposing viewpoints fairly and to look at what they have in common rather than at what divides them. … The mixture of detached overviews and strongly argued positions works very well, in my view, and the editor is to be congratulated for the high standards that are maintained throughout. The tremendous intellectual energy and excitement of the field come through strongly, and I shan't hesitate to recommend many of the chapters to students.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

• Contributors; Preface; 1. The study of language in its socio-cultural context Beatriz R. Lavandera; 2. Language, culture, and world-view Jane H. Hill; 3. Language and social class Gregory R. Guy; 4. Language and race: some implications for linguistic science John Baugh; 5. Language and gender Sally McConnell-Ginet; 6. Bilingualism Bernard Spolsky; 7. Dialectology Keith Walters; 8. Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation David Sankoff; 9. Language birth: the processes of pidginization and creolization William A. Foley; 10. Language death Wolfgang U. Dressler; 11. Language planning: the view from linguistics Donna Christian; 12. Ethnography of speaking: towards a linguistics of the praxis Alessandro Duranti; 13. The organisation of discourse Diane Blakemore; 14. Conversation analysis Deborah Schiffrin; Index of names; Index of subjects.

'The contributions are informed, up-to-date and lucid, and many of them make unusual - in fact, unprecedented - efforts to present opposing viewpoints fairly and to look at what they have in common rather than at what divides them. … The mixture of detached overviews and strongly argued positions works very well, in my view, and the editor is to be congratulated for the high standards that are maintained throughout. The tremendous intellectual energy and excitement of the field come through strongly, and I shan't hesitate to recommend many of the chapters to students.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

• Contributors; Preface; 1. The study of language in its socio-cultural context Beatriz R. Lavandera; 2. Language, culture, and world-view Jane H. Hill; 3. Language and social class Gregory R. Guy; 4. Language and race: some implications for linguistic science John Baugh; 5. Language and gender Sally McConnell-Ginet; 6. Bilingualism Bernard Spolsky; 7. Dialectology Keith Walters; 8. Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation David Sankoff; 9. Language birth: the processes of pidginization and creolization William A. Foley; 10. Language death Wolfgang U. Dressler; 11. Language planning: the view from linguistics Donna Christian; 12. Ethnography of speaking: towards a linguistics of the praxis Alessandro Duranti; 13. The organisation of discourse Diane Blakemore; 14. Conversation analysis Deborah Schiffrin; Index of names; Index of subjects.