This edited volume brings together thirty-three peer-reviewed articles focusing on contemporary sociolinguistic theories and methodologies applied to research on Hungarian and some lesser-known languages spoken in Eastern Europe. First presented at the seventeenth bi-annual Hungarian Sociolinguistics Conference in Szeged, the papers feature a plethora of critical comments, research notes, and case studies organized in four sections. The two plenary papers in the first section offer thought-provoking analyses of generative and evolutionary linguistic approaches to variation through illustrations from Hungarian. The twenty-two papers that follow are presented in a single nonthematic section. They illustrate multiple theoretical and methodological issues that are particularly relevant to current research on minority and state languages in this region of Europe. Questions of language ideology and collective identity in minority communities, for instance, are discussed through the lens of everyday politics of language choice in kindergartens in Ukraine, the sociolinguistic implications of the use of minority-language terminology in vocational schools in Slovakia, and the identity practices of hearing-impaired children and adults in Hungary. Methods in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics are also approached from many angles, among them dialectal variation in sentence types and linguistic purism in the 1930s and 1940s. Lexical innovations in contemporary language use are exemplified by papers on discourse particles, slang, and neologisms in the media.

The last two sections consist of thematic groupings referred to as ‘workshops’ (m űhely). Each thematic section is introduced by a position paper that reflects on the overall goal of the workshop. The first theme, titled ‘Linguistic variables, language use, and dialect geography’, brings together four empirical analyses of phonological and morphosyntactic variation in several dialects of Hungarian. In keeping with the most dominant analytical framework in dialectology, variable features such as l-dropping, labialization of e [e] to ö [ø], and -ik conjugation are examined as a function of multiple social factors. Among these are traditional microsociological categories such as age, gender, and education as well as more innovative and geolinguistically relevant variables, such as proximity to state borders. The final thematic workshop, titled ‘Uralic languages from a sociolinguistic perspective’, offers a rare glimpse into sociolinguistic variation in lesser-known Uralic languages. Among the most noteworthy contributions in this section are two papers on the role of printed and broadcast media in the maintenance of Udmurt and Komi-Permyak, two minority languages spoken in the Volga-Ural region of Russia.

This volume offers a uniquely diverse overview of contemporary research methods applied to Hungarian and several lesser-known state and minority languages in Eastern Europe. One can only hope that one day some of these truly original studies will be brought to the broader sociolinguistic community in English.