Christina Bratt Paulston & G. Richard Tucker (eds.), Sociolinguistics: The essential readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. Pp xviii, 502.

Sociolinguistics, broadly defined as “the study of language in its social contexts and the study of social life through linguistics” (Coupland & Jaworski 1997:1), turns out to be a very lively and popular field of study. Evidence for its popularity is that introductory textbooks and collections of original readings keep appearing on the desks of sociolinguistics students. Among the former we have, for instance, Holmes 1992, Mesthrie et al. 2000, Romaine 2000, and Wardhaugh 2002. Among the latter, we have Coupland & Jaworski 1997 at least. The introductory textbooks, which can serve as a second-hand synopsis of classic seminal work in the field, often cannot satisfy curious students, who feel it compulsory to do first-hand reading of the original works of influential authors.