ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to the communities of the Southwest Indian Ocean islands, namely the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion and the Seychelles. It provides a survey of recent and current research trends in sociolinguistics in this part of the world. Although I place emphasis on contemporary scholarship, I have extended my overview to offer a brief account of what took place during the last three decades of the twentieth century as this chapter was not included in the previous edition of the Handbook. Beyond these objectives, the broader aim of this chapter is, first, to show that research in sociolinguistics can play a role in the recognition and promotion of languages prior to their formal use in institutions. Second, it demonstrates how academic scholarly work on languages and society in one rather ‘remote’ part of the world - to use a very debatable Eurocentric term - can contribute to theorisation in the discipline.
