This book is an introductory text intended for nonspecialists in sociolinguistics or linguistics.It is organized into four sections and designed so that its first section, the “Survey ofSociolinguistics,” may be read alone or along with the accompanying selected readings inthe second part. The third and fourth sections are references and a glossary. The readings sectionalso contains study questions that refer to both the survey and the readings, leading the reader tointegrate the information in both sections. The topics covered in the survey include the socialstudy of language, the ethnography of speaking and structure of conversation, locating variationsin speech, styles, gender, and social class, bilinguals and bilingualism, societal multilingualism,and applied sociolinguistics (which covers language policy and planning).