BOOK REVIEWS DICK SMAKMAN AND PATRICK HEINRICH (eds.). Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory. Abingdon, U.K./New York: Routledge. 2015. 276 pp. Hb (9780415725590) £125.00 / Pb (97804157256060) £34.99. Reviewed by NAOMI NAGY This is a collection of sociolinguistic perspectives on communities that are rarely examined in the variationist framework or, in most cases, in terms of their microsociolinguistic variation. Geographically, they span Eastern, Western, Southern and North Africa, South and Southeastern Asia, China, Japan, far eastern Russia, Slavic Eurasia, northern Scandinavia, the European Mediterranean, Scotland, Ireland, Alaska, the Caribbean and South America – every continent but Antarctica. A map showing the locations discussed is provided on page xx. The volume begins with two introductory chapters providing orientation by summarizing ‘the changing face’ of western sociolinguistics. This early material also includes a list (in section 2.9) of several additional sources of recent research on less well-documented languages that contribute to the goal of globalizing sociolinguistics. Following the opening chapters are seventeen contributed papers that are presented in four sections. The reports are organized in an innovative way: according to the ‘social and economic development’ (p. xvii) of the community/ country under study, based on their respective classification on the Human Development Index (http://countryeconomy.com/hdi). The organization into these four sections invites us to consider whether the degree to which western sociolinguistics applies to a particular community is correlated with this dimension of development. But the instructions to contributors were ‘to choose one or more well-known theories or models that ill fit in the culture they are studying and to illustrate the incompatibility by referring to existing research’ (p. xvi). Thus, we are presented with a biased view of how western theory does not fit, leaving us to draw our own conclusions about the relationship more generally. The 17 contributions are followed by a brief ‘Concluding Remarks’ chapter by the editors (pp. 270–271) which calls for working from case studies up to theory and the development of more widely appropriate methods. Each contributed paper offers valuable insight, particularly in terms of providing: • macrosociolinguistic descriptions of language use patterns and attitudes; • pointers toward further reading about each community and research on their languages; Journal of Sociolinguistics 20/5, 2016: 712–721 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd