This volume presents a comprehensive exposition of contrastive sociolinguistics. Basic issues in sociolinguistics are approached from a contrasted point of view. In 22 contributions, acclaimed sociolinguists deal with the following areas of research: bilingualism; multilingualism; language planning and language politics; and international discourse analysis. Starting from a discussion of the deficiencies of the received sociolinguistic approach as well as of traditional contrastive linguistics, the authors develop a new set of theroretical perspectives which take political, economic and cultural factors into account. At the same time, the authors present recent empirical findings from variuous countries, thereby exemplifying the methodological pluralism which is characteristic of current research.