This collection of 24 papers focuses on language and society in South Africa. Part 1, "The Main Language Groupings," includes (1) "South Africa: A Sociolinguistic Overview" (R. Mesthrie); (2) "The Khoesan Languages" (A. Traill); (3) "The Bantu Languages: Sociohistorical Perspectives" (Robert K. Herbert and Richard Bailey); (4) "Afrikaans: Considering Origins" (Paul T. Roberge); (5) "South African English" (Roger Lass); (6) "South African Sign Language: One Language or Many?" (Debra Aarons and Philemon Akach); (7) "German Speakers in South Africa" (Elizabeth De Kadt); and (8) "Language Change, Survival, Decline: Indian Languages in South Africa" (R. Mesthrie). Part 2, "Language Contact," includes (9) "Fanakalo: A Pidgin in South Africa" (Ralph Adendorff); (10) "Mutual Lexical Borrowings among Some Languages of Southern Africa: Xhosa, Afrikaans and English" (William Branford and J.S. Claughton); (11) "Code-Switching, Mixing and Convergence in Cape Town" (K. McCormick); (12) "Code-Switching in South African Townships" (S. Slabbert and R. Finlayson); (13) "Intercultural Miscommunication in South Africa" (J. Keith Chick); (14) "Women's Language of Respect: isihlonipho sabafazi" (R. Finlayson); (15) "The Sociohistory of Clicks in Southern Bantu" (Robert K. Herbert); (16) "The Political Economy of Language Shift: Language and Gendered Ethnicity in a Thonga Community" (Robert K. Herbert); (17) "From Second Language to First Language: Indian South African English" (R. Mesthrie); (18) "Black South African English" (Vivian de Klerk and David Gough); (19) "The Lexicon and Sociolinguistic Codes of the Working-Class Afrikaans-Speaking Cape Peninsula Coloured Community" (Gerald L. Stone); (20) "An Introduction to Flaaitaal (or Tsotsiaal)" (K.D.P. Makhudu); and (21) "Language and Language Practices in Soweto" (Dumisani Krushchev Ntshangase). Part 3, "Language Planning, Policy and Education" includes (22) "Language Planning and Language Policy: Past, Present and Future" (T.G. Reagan); (23) "Language Issues in South African Education: An Overview" (Sarah Murray); and (24) "Recovering Multilingualism: Recent Language-Policy Developments" (Kathleen Heugh). (Papers contain references.) (SM)