Joshua Fishman needs to be read and re-read by future generations. His reverence for the small languages and peoples of this world, the holiness of his international humanity, and his fight for language freedoms, make him one of the world's most remarkable scholars. His mountain-top view of downtrodden ethnic groups and dying languages creates a universal vision of a new land.  Those who work at the sharp end of top-down and bottom-up language planning know that Fishman is a prophet in his own time.  In his writing there is a condensation of wisdom, a vision composed in one century but even more relevant in the next.  The book contains an excellent recent selection of his deep insights and vast understandings that need inter-generational transmission. While his writings continue, this collection is a priceless legacy that needs preservation and re-presentation to future generations.

Nancy H. Hornberger is Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She investigates, teaches, lectures, and consults on multilingual language and education policy and practice worldwide, combining methods and perspectives from anthropology and sociolinguistics. Her special focus is indigenous and immigrant heritage language education, grounded in her comparative ethnographic research in the South American Andes and urban Philadelphia (USA). Her most recent book is Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings (Multilingual Matters, 2003) and she is General Editor for the forthcoming 10-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Education (Springer).

Martin Pütz is Full Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany (Campus Landau) where he regularly organises linguistic conferences (International LAUD Symposia). His research interests include sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and foreign language teaching/learning. He has done extensive fieldwork in Great Britain, Namibia and Australia on a variety of topics such as intercultural communication, codeswitching, pidgins/creoles, language policy and educational language planning. His recent book publication includes ‘Along the Routes to Power’: Explorations of Empowerment through Language (with co-editors Joshua A. Fishman and JoAnne Neff – van Aertselaer).

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Colin Baker

Introduction by Nancy H. Hornberger and Martin Pütz

An Interview with Joshua A. Fishman

Part 1: Personal Perspectives on Sociolinguistics

1. My Life Through My Work: My Work Through My Life
In K. Koerner (ed) (1991) First Person Singular, Vol. 2: Autobiographies by North American Scholars in the Language Sciences (pp. 105-124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2. Bloomington, Summer 1964: The Birth of American Sociolinguistics
In C. Bratt-Paulston and G.R. Tucker (eds) (1997) The Early Days of Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections (pp. 87-95). Dallas, TX: The Summer Institute of Linguistics.

3. Putting the 'Socio' Back into the Sociolinguistic Enterprise
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 92, 127-138 (1991).

4. Diglossia and Societal Multilingualism: Dimensions of Similarity and Difference
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 157, 93-100 (2002).

Part 2: Loyalty, Shift and Revitalization

5. What is Reversing Language Shift (RLS) and How Can It Succeed?
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 11, 5-36 (1990).

6. Reversing Language Shift: Successes, Failures, Doubts and Dilemmas
In E. Jahr (ed) (1993) Language Conflict and Language Planning, 69-81.

7. Language Revitalization
H. Goebel, P. H. Nelde, Z. Stary and W. Wölck (eds) (1996) Kontaktlinguistik/Contact Linguistics/Linguistique de Contact, Vol. 1 (pp. 902-906). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

8. Good Conferences in a Wicked World: On Some Worrisome Problems in the Study of Language Maintenance and Language Shift
In W. Fase, K. Jaspaert, S. Kroon (eds) (1995?) The State of Minority Languages: International Perspectives on Survival and Decline (pp. 311-317).

9. Prospects for Reversing Language Shift (RLS) in Australia: Evidence from Aboriginal and Immigrant Languages
In J. A. Fishman (1991) Reversing Language Shift (pp. 252-286). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Part 3: Globalization, Power and the Status of Threatened Languages

10. 'English Only': Its Ghosts, Myths, and Dangers
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 74, 125-140 (1988).

11. On the Limits of Ethnolinguistic Democracy
In T. Skutnabb-Kangas and R. Phillipson (eds) (1995) Linguistic Human Rights: Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination (pp. 49-61). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

12. Language Spread and Language Policy for Endangered Languages
In (1987) Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 1- 15). Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

13. 'Business as Usual' for Threatened Languages (On Planning Economic Efforts for the Greater Benefit of Reversing Language Shift, or 'Keeping your Eyes on the Ball')
He Pukenga Korero: A Journal of Maori Studies, 5 (2), 16-20 (2000).

Part 4: Yiddish Language and Culture

14. The Holiness of Yiddish: Who Says Yiddish is Holy and Why?
Language Policy, 1, 123-141 (2002).

15. 'Holy Languages' in the Context of Societal Bilingualism
In L. Wei, J. Dewaele, A. Houston (eds) (2002) Opportunities and Challenges of Bilingualism (pp. 15-24). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.