"Since it first appeared more than ten years ago. Ronald Wardhaugh's An Introduction toSociolinguistics has been an immensely popular choice of textbook for courses in sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. This thirdedition retains the basic structureof the original, but incorporates a wealth of new material reflecting the progress of the fieldsince the start of the 1990s. In particular. the coverage of pidgins and creoles. code-switching, sociolinguistic variation, languagechange, dis