Language and society in Hong Kong, edited by two prominent scholars in the field, is a comprehensive and well-edited volume on the sociolinguistic situation in Hong Kong, providing an excellent overview of a wide range of issues pertinent to the sociolinguistics of Hong Kong. The volume is comprised of eighteen chapters and is divided into six sections, namely, the Hong Kong speech community, the sociolinguistics of Chinese, the sociolinguistics of English, code-switching and code-mixing, language and gender, and language planning and language policy.

Part 1 consists of three chapters that examine the language situation of Hong Kong as a speech community. The chapters discuss the complex relationship between the southern Chinese dialects and the Chinese language family as a whole (Mary Erbaugh), the changing sociolinguistic profile of Hong Kong with reference to data drawn from census data and language survey data (John Bacon-Shone & Kingsley Bolton), and a case study of language repertoire and language use in two Hong Kong Indian communities (Champa Detaramani & Graham Lock). Part 2 contains four chapters that explore the sociolinguistics of Chinese, particularly Cantonese and other varieties of Chinese in Hong Kong. Topics include language attitudes in Guangzhou, China (Ivan Kalmar, Zhang Yong, & Xiao Hong), an examination of written Cantonese from a folkloristic viewpoint (Wan-kan Chin), a sociolinguistic description of Hong Kong Cantonese (Peter Pan), and the academic debate on the standardization of Cantonese (Katherine Chen).

Part 3 moves on to look at the sociolinguistics of English, and in particular, Hong Kong English and its spread and perceptions in the territory (Bolton), and the functions and status of English in Hong Kong in different domains such as media, employment, education, and government (David Li). Part 3 concludes with a short story written by a Hong Kong writer that provides an example of Hong Kong literature in English (Xu Xi). Part 4 is devoted to the discussion of two closely related linguistic phenomena, code-switching and code-mixing, and contains a chapter on domain-specific code-switching in Hong Kong (Li), and another chapter on the relationship between code-switching and social changes in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Pan Yuling). Part 5 focuses on the much-researched area of language and gender, and explores the existence of gender bias in the Chinese language (Charles Ettner), gendered discourse practices in Hong Kong beauty pageants (Angel Lin), and gender-related use of sentence-final particles in Cantonese (Marjorie Chan). Part 6 addresses issues regarding language planning and language policies, with chapters on language rights in the context of Hong Kong law courts (Anne Cheung), the medium of instruction policy (Amy Tsui), and language attitudes of the first postcolonial generation in Hong Kong secondary schools (Mee-Ling Lai).

In sum, this volume gathers together well-researched and representative articles on the sociolinguistic situation of Hong Kong from a wide range of perspectives, along with an up-to-date chapter reporting on the current language situation in Hong Kong from a macro-sociolinguistic perspective (Ch. 2, by Bacon-Shone & Bolton). The volume is not only an invaluable and very welcome collection of papers in sociolingusistics, but also a long-awaited and timely reader on language and society in Hong Kong. It would certainly be of interest to researchers who would like to get an overview of sociolinguistic research in Hong Kong and to postgraduate students who are engaged in research on language and society in Hong Kong, China or Asia in general.