The review highlights theoretical issues of sociolinguis-tics and their practical implementation, for instance in language policy. The relationship between sociolinguistics and related disciplines, par-ticularly the sociology of language, is studied. Allan Bell, former editor of the leading sociolinguistic journal, Journal of sociolinguistics, traces major trends in the discipline over the past two decades. Monica Heller, the journal’s current editor, carries out social criticism of linguistics as a science, i.e. conducts analysis from the standpoint of critical sociolin-guistics. The review also includes materials from the first issue of the Russian journal Sociolinguistics, thus drawing attention to the issues on the agenda of Russian sociolinguistics.
sociolinguistics; sociology of language; sociolinguis-tic journals; language policy; multilingualism; social inequality.