This collection of 12 essays by European and North-American sociolinguists offers a multi-pronged and multi-methodological way to move towards a critical, reflexive and theoretically responsible socio-linguistics.

1. List of contributors; 2. Acknowledgements; 3. Introduction (by Singh, Rajendra); 4. 1. Where does the sociolonguistic variable stop? (by Lavandera, Beatriz R.); 5. 2. Syntactic variation and dialect divergence (by Harris, John); 6. 3. The autonomy of social variables: The indian evidence revisited (by Singh, Rajendra); 7. 4. The quiet demise of variable rules (by Fasold, Ralph W.); 8. 5. The status of sociological models and categories in explaining language variation (by Romaine, Suzanne); 9. 6. Descriptive and explanatory power of rules in sociolinguistics (by Dittmar, Norbert); 10. 7. Report from an underdeveloped country: Toward lingguistic competence in the United States (by Hymes, Dell H.); 11. 8. Language death (by Dressler, Wolfgang U.); 12. 9. Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation (by Zimmerman, Dean H.); 13. 10. Communication in a multilingual society: Some missed opportunities (by Singh, Rajendra); 14. 11. The political topography of Spanish and English: The view from a New York Puerto Rican neighborhood (by Urciuoli, Bonnie); 15. 12. Language planning as discourse (by Williams, Geoffrey); 16. References; 17. Authors index; 18. Language index; 19. Subject index