Silva-Corvalán's volume makes an important contribution both to sociolinguistics in general, and to Spanish linguistics in particular. The contributors address theoretical and empirical issues that advance our knowledge of what is a possible linguistic change, how languages change, and how changes spread in society in situations of intensive bilingualism and language contact, a situation that appears to be the norm rather than the exception in the world.
Carmen Silva-Corvalán is a professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Sociolingüística: Teoría y análisis (Alhambra, 1989) and Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles (Oxford University Press, 1994).