It's rare to encounter a textbook that one will want to read cover to cover. But Gerard van Herk has written exactly that, introducing students to the field of sociolinguistics as the best teachers do: with excitement, humor, and deep knowledge. What is Sociolinguistics? is a tour through the major issues that define the field, such as region, status, gender, time, language attitudes, interaction, and style, while also exploring the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, culture and ethnicity, language contact, and education.

The chapters contains useful and clear features including:

• Numerous innovative exercises and
• Spotlighted research, where the author introduces some key concepts discussed in foundational research and offers suggestions for reading the primary literature
• Further readings, glossary terms, chapter summaries, and text boxes that explore introduced concepts in greater depth for interested students
• The companion website offers PowerPoint slides for instructors and sample answers to questions, while providing students with further resources, including sound files and carefully curated links for further study.