'The serious research invested allows us to hope that Arabic sociolinguistics will soon cease to be a neglected step-brother of general sociolinguistics. It is to the credit of the editor, Yasir Suleman, that he has brought together these scholars and published their contributions.' - Jacob M. Landau, International Journal of the Sociology of Language

• One: Identity and Loyalty; 1: Nationalism and the Arabic Language: An Historical Overview *; 2: Algeria: Language, Nation and State; 3: Language Loyalty: The Case of Algerian Immigrants' Children in France; 4: Discriminating Texts: Orthographic Marking and Social Differentiation in the Court Records of Ottoman Damascus; Two: Aspects of Linguistic Behaviour; 5: “What's in a Name?”: Women in Egyptian Obituaries *; 6: Generations of Change in Name-Giving; 7: Talking to Machines in Arabic; 8: The Metalinguistic Joke: Sociolinguistic Dimensions of an Arabic Folk Genre; Three: Varieties and Variation; 9: Speaking Fu??? in Cairo: the Role of the Ending Vowels; 10: Attitudinal Reactions to Language Change in an Urban Setting; 11: The Situation Of Arabic In Israel; Four: Theoretical Issues; 12: On the Definition of Dialect with Reference to Yemeni Dialects of Arabic; 13: Medieval Arabic as a Form of ‘Social Contract', with Special Reference to Ibn-Hish?m's Mughn? Al-Lab?b * .