This innovative introduction outlines the structure and distribution of the world’s languages, charting their evolution over the past 200,000 years.

• Balances linguistic analysis with socio-historical and political context, offering a cohesive picture of the relationship between language and society
• Provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of language by drawing not only on the diverse fields of linguistics (structural, linguist anthropology, historical, sociolinguistics), but also on history, biology, genetics, sociology, and more
• Includes nine detailed language profiles on Kurdish, Arabic, Tibetan, Hawaiian, Vietnamese, Tamil, !Xóõ (Taa), Mongolian, and Quiché
• A companion website offers a host of supplementary materials including, sound files, further exercises, and detailed introductory information for students new to linguistics

Julie Tetel Andresen is Professor of English and former Chair of Linguistic at Duke University. A linguistic historiographer focusing on French, German, British, and American theories of language from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, she is the author of Linguistics and Evolution: A Developmental Approach (2013) and Linguistics in America 1769–1924: A Critical History (1996).

Phillip M. Carter is Assistant Professor of English and Linguistics at Florida International University. Specializing in immigrant and ethnolinguistic minority communities in the Unites States, his work on the language varieties and cultural practices of U.S. Latinos has been published in leading journals, including Language in Society, English Worldwide, Journal of Sociolinguistics, American Speech, and Language in Linguistics Compass.