Viv Edwards is Professor of Language and Education at the University of Reading. She is editor of the international journal Language and Education, and her publications include The World in a Classroom: Language in Education in Britain and Canada (with Angela Redfern, 1992), The Other Languages: A Guide to Multilingual Classrooms (1996), and The Power of Babel: Teaching and Learning in Multilingual Classrooms (1998).

• Preface. Part I: The extent of diversity:.1. The myth of monolingualism.2. Roots of diversity.3. Access to services.Part II: Language at home and in school:.4. Language in the family.5. Language and education: a history.6. Language and education in the modern world.7. Majority speakers and minority languages.Part III: Language in the wider community:.8. Language and the economy.9. Language and the media.10. Language and the Arts.11. Language, diplomacy and defence.12. Is life really too short to learn German?.References.Index.

‘This ambitious book is timely, well conceived, and highly accessible to a wide audience. The author brings together a range of topics related to language that have not been addressed coherently in any other volume.’ Jim Cummins, University of Toronto ‘This is a book whose time has come. Its focus on multilingualism in English-dominant countries uncovers a wealth of language activity that has largely gone unnoticed, and unremarked, until now, providing a much-needed counterbalance to the myopic preoccupation in the academic and wider popular literature with English. Viv Edwards’s book is also simply a pleasure to read – highly lucid, accessible and interesting, there is much here to enjoy, and learn from, for both the academic and the general reader.’ Stephen May, University of Waikato "This work remains an important contribution to macro-sociolinguistic issues." Journal of Sociolinguistics "A hugely informative and timely book, which focuses on multilingualism in English-dominant countries"Multilingua