ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of sociolinguistic research in southern Africa, defined for the purposes of this handbook as Botswana, Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The account is based on research published in English and French after the publication of the first handbook in 2008. After a general overview of the language situation in the countries concerned, a variety of other topics are touched upon, including language policy and planning, applied studies in education, multilingualism and language contact, language variation, language and gender, and anthropological linguistics and further disciplinary fringes. The chapter concludes with an outlook on future fields of sociolinguistic relevance.
