Written by teachers with first-hand experience of sociolinguistic developments on four continents, this textbook has introduced thousands of students worldwide to the central topics in sociolinguistics. Now fully updated to reflect the new debates, approaches, and findings within the field, this is the perfect resource for those taking introductory courses in Sociolinguistics, Language and Society, Identity and Power and Language Variation and Change. The book covers multilingualism, code-choice, language variation, dialectology, interactional studies, gender, language contact, language and inequality, and language and power. Brand new additions include: an innovative new chapter exploring globalisation and language, a new chapter on writing and multimodality and new sections exploring areas such as migration, gender and identity, the sociolinguistics of writing, new modes of communication and youth languages.