Bell's The guidebook to sociolinguistics and Holmes and Hazen's edited volume, Research methods in sociolinguistics: A practical guide are both welcome additions to a range of textbooks on sociolinguistics, and even though the two volumes are not intended to build on each other, Holmes and Hazen's practical guide complements Bell's guidebook in content and style in many ways. Both books were published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2014 and Holmes and Hazen's volume is part of the Guides to research methods in language and linguistics series edited by Li Wei. While Bell's guidebook is meant to be an introduction to the broad field of sociolinguistics, Holmes and Hazen's research methods guide provides theoretical and practical advice for advanced research projects in sociolinguistics. I will not be able to go through both books in detail but will pick out some noticeable points.

Starting with the guidebook, Bell claims that ‘one distinctive of my approach is that, as well as covering the content of sociolinguistics, the book is committed to acquainting students with how sociolinguistics is done’ (p. xvi). And indeed, the book contains ‘nearly a hundred exercises’ (p. xvii) of different types, for example, in-class work, solo or group work. In addition, three research activities are presented for students who are undertaking a longer research project. Copious visual aids such as diagrams and charts are provided, and examples and exercises are highlighted.

Bell comprehensively illustrates the three main approaches to sociolinguistics, ‘multilingualism, ethnographic-interactional and variationist’ and how they are interrelated (6ff) in chapter 1. Chapters 2 to 4 deal with macro-sociolinguistic approaches to language, focusing on issues such as language contact, shift and maintenance, while chapters 5 and 6 centre around topics in the ethnographic-interactional strand. Chapters 7 to 9 then discuss the micro-sociolinguistic view by discussing topics relevant to the language variation and change approach. Chapters 10 and 11 review topics which are of concern in all three approaches, i.e. language ideology, style and identity.

In the last chapter (chapter 12), Bell revisits the foundation of the field in social theory and comments that in many cases sociolinguists are not making use of findings from social sciences but ‘cobble up our own bric-a-brac answers that have long been addressed in sociology’ (p. 324) and he criticises research that is the product of the variationist approach, in particular William Labov's (2001) Principles of linguistic change, vol. 2: Social factors (Blackwell) and Peter Trudgill's (2004) New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes (Edinburgh University Press), as having started the side-lining of social psychological factors in favour of more mechanical factors. Bell (p. 326; his emphasis) makes his standpoint very clear in the very timely discussion about the divide between the social side and the linguistic side, which is occurring in the field at the moment: ‘It seems to me to be the unique contribution of our field that we treat seriously and skilfully the analysis and theorization of society and language together, and that we not endorse that they are separate or separable entities. The push should be to theorize both society and language in an ever more well-founded and integrated way.’

Both macro and microlinguistic aspects of sociolinguistics are presented in the book. However, unusually for textbooks on sociolinguistics, macrolinguistic aspects such as bilingualism, language shift and language birth and death are presented before the microlinguistic aspects. Bell follows his own experience as a teacher here, leaving the variationist material which requires the most linguistic skills for the later part of the course. However, it is possible to organise the reading of these chapters differently if this approach is not applicable for the individual lecturer.

The content chapters all have the same structure: each contains a case study, a research activity, a chapter summary and an annotated bibliography. The latter proves to be invaluable for students but also for experienced sociolinguists: Bell presents an unprecedented breadth of high-quality sociolinguistic literature on every area covered in the book. One minor point of criticism could be that the exercises are not listed at the beginning of the book, which would make it easier to find them given that there are so many. However, this point does not detract from the quality of this fine introduction to the field.

The guidebook to sociolinguistics is a compact introduction to the vast field of sociolinguistics and even though – as Bell admits himself – not everything could be included (e.g. a chapter on discourse analysis is missing), the topics and depth with which they are covered is impressive. Bell uses his longstanding teaching experience and his involvement as editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics to write a comprehensive introduction to sociolinguistics. Even though this book is directed at students, researchers will also benefit from it as it is an extensive resource covering most areas of sociolinguistics.

Moving on to Holmes and Hazen's edited volume, Research methods in sociolinguistics, the book is organised into two major sections. The first part deals with identifying and collecting various kinds of sociolinguistic data (chapters 2–4) by presenting different methods in each chapter, i.e. sociolinguistic interviews, written surveys and questionnaires, experimental methods, and computer-mediated communication and linguistic landscape research. The second part discusses the different ways of analysing data (chapters 6–20) and is split into the broad subareas of ‘Focusing on features of language from a sociolinguistic perspective’ (chapters 6–13) and ‘Focusing on aspects of sociocultural context in analyzing language’ (chapters 14–20). Chapters in the former part investigate historical sociolinguistics; corpus linguistics; phonological considerations in sociophonetics; and phonetic, morphosyntax, vocabulary, discourse, and statistical analyses. The latter part contains chapters on anthropology; conversation analysis; geographical dialectology; speech communities, social networks, and communities of practice; variation in multilingual contexts; social context, style, and identity; and children's acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. It is Holmes and Hazen's explicit goal to ‘provide students with a solid understanding of how to conduct different kinds of sociolinguistic research’ (p. 1).

In broad terms the division of subareas presented in this book is criticised by Bell in his guidebook. In the first chapter Hazen comments on the division between research focusing on linguistic aspects and research focusing on society aspects, which provides the rationale for the division of chapters 6–20 into two sections. He explains that these are related but separate areas in sociolinguistics, having grown out of the quantitative/qualitative division in the early days of sociolinguistics. Hazen mentions Nikolas Coupland's (2007) Style (Cambridge University Press) as representative of a more incorporated approach but, unlike Bell, Hazen does not take a stance in this discussion in the first chapter. However, by organising the book in this way, a stance is indeed taken by the editors.

The volume is mainly addressed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and in chapters 6–20 in particular some linguistic knowledge is needed for full comprehension. Edited books are always at the risk of coming across as fragmented in that the chapters do not correspond to each other. Editing a textbook is an additional challenge but most chapters in the book adhere to a rigid structure and there is cross-referencing between the different chapters. Each chapter is concise and most chapters include a short summary at the beginning of the chapter, quagmires and troubleshooting, advice and/or tips and project ideas and suggestions for further reading. In particular, including quagmires and troubleshooting is very valuable for students embarking on conducting their first research projects. Short, comprehensive chapters, written in an engaging style with a common structure (as we also see in Bell) make this book a reliable study tool. The book can be used for individual studies or as an assigned textbook in class. It provides a good foundation for class discussion and exercises but still leaves enough room for lecturers to add extra information and organise the content in their own way.

In many areas Holmes and Hazen's practical guide complements Bell's guidebook. For example, while Bell introduces basic concepts such as ‘Variation in language’ (chapter 7, and the following chapters ‘Language in time’ and ‘Language in space’), Erik Thomas, Paul Kerswill and Kevin Watson, and Julia Davydova, provide an advanced view on the phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic analysis of data. In other areas, there is complementing material, for example, language shift and maintenance and pidgins and creoles. However, Holmes and Hazen do not claim that all areas of sociolinguistics are represented in the book. The different stances on the linguistic and social focus in sociolinguistic research mentioned above is the other clear difference in both books. However, this is an excellent and timely point to pick up on in a discussion in an advanced sociolinguistics class.

Just like Bell's guidebook, the practical guide to research methods in sociolinguistics is a welcome addition to the field, bringing together leading experts in sociolinguistics to share their knowledge about data collection and analysis. This is clearly a textbook for more advanced students of sociolinguistics but researchers in the field of sociolinguistics will also benefit from this read.