This handbook is aimed at students who have studied some linguistics and sociolinguistics and who need an advanced and up-to-date account of the field. The contributors, who were all chosen for their special contributions to the field of sociolinguistics, were charged with the task of providing authoritative and detailed, yet accessible, overviews of significant branches of the subject. It is not expected that readers will wade through the entire work, for this is obviously not an introductory textbook, but rather read specific chapters depending on their needs and areas of interest. The chapters will be of use to academics and researchers outside sociolinguistics who wish to keep up with newer developments in a field that is becoming increasingly central in the humanities.

I would like to thank the following persons whose role in seeing the handbook through different stages has been salutary: Rowan Mentis, my main assistant on this project, for working on the bibliography and index and managing the chapter files; Alida Chevalier for secondary assistance; and Walt Wolfram, who worked with me in the early stages of this project and recruited many of the contributors on language variation and change. I would also like to thank all contributors for their cooperation and sparkling contributions, and my editors, Andrew Winnard and Sarah Green, at Cambridge University Press for their patience over delays in delivering the final product. Finally, I am grateful to the University of Cape Town, and the Humanities Faculty in particular, for creating a supportive research and editing environment.