The strength of this large volume is its diversity: There is a wealth of papers covering different sociolinguistic and pragmatic topics from different perspectives. The range is such that few researchers in the area of the social use of language will not want, sooner or later, to refer to one of the articles in this book. All of them are by established researchers, but some give overviews of earlier research and important issues, while others report on specific pieces of sociolinguistic research.