Elizabeth Seale is associate professor of sociology at SUNY College at Oneonta.Christine Mallinson is professor of language, literacy and culture and affiliate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Rural Voices is an important and timely volume in an era where relationships between rural and urban populations appear especially contested. It fills a gap in rural scholarship by addressing the sociolinguistic roots and forms of place-based differences that revolve around identity construction, class distinctions, and cultural practices. By addressing the role of language, the contributors make new breakthroughs in the understanding of rural populations. The book is remarkable for its interdisciplinary and international reach. The editors bring together a team of scholars from linguistics, anthropology, and sociology with chapters spanning nations in North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The volume will interest students and researchers new to rural scholarship and open up a provocative lens on a virtually unexplored subject for those who have long-studied rural populations.

• ForewordGregory Fulkerson and Alexander ThomasAcknowledgmentsIntroductionElizabeth Seale and Christine MallinsonPart I: Revalorizing the Rural: Negotiating Tradition, Resistance, and Change1. Multivocal and Critical Performance of Urban Language in Rural NorwayThea Strand2. “Losing Our Inuttitut”: The Intersection of Language Shift and Language Attitudes in Nain, NunatsiavutJennifer Thorburn3. Townie, Bayman, or Newfoundlander? Linguistic Constructions of Urban and Rural in NewfoundlandBecky Childs and Gerard Van Herk4. The Social Mediatization of a Zapotec Transborder CommunityElizabeth FalconiPart II: The Realities of Rural Diversity and Identity Construction5. Rural Voices in Appalachia: The Shifting Sociolinguistic Reality of Rural LifeKirk Hazen6. Ecologies of Sui Sociolinguistics: A Language Permeated with Rural Social StructureJames N. Stanford, Wei Shuqi, and Lu Li7. Rural Youth Language Practices: Linguistic Creativity and the Globalized African VillageNico NassensteinPart III: Social Hierarchy: Aspirations and Differentiation8. Use of Standard Arabic [q] Lexical Borrowings in Syrian Rural Migrant SpeechRania Habib9. Social Aspiration and Traditional Speech Features among Rural Newfoundland YouthSarah Kristian10. “It’s Complicated” for Quebec’s Anglophones: Language and Stratification in Changing Rural PlacesAimee VieiraConclusionElizabeth Seale and Christine Mallinson