This edited volume explores the historical processes of language-policy formulation in Afghanistan and the countries around it in Central Asia and examines how multilingualism is central to understanding these processes. An introduction situates Afghan languages in their larger context of Central and South Asia, as well as attempting to determine which model of multilingualism best characterizes the multilingual relations in the region. The authors put forward the notion of “shifting diglossias,” extending Charles A. Ferguson's (1959) work on diglossia in order to incorporate the increasing speed of sociolinguistic change over the past 100 years, and they take a position on language policy that includes both official statements about language as well as unofficial and popular practices.

Section 1 consists of three chapters that deal with Afghanistan and Iran. In Ch. 1, Senzil Nawid looks broadly at Afghanistan's language policy, with a specific focus on Dari, through an exploration of the country's linguistic diversity in relation to national unity. In Ch. 2 Walter Hakala looks specifically at the Pashto language through a survey of English language sources describing Pashto as it exists in Afghanistan. Brian Spooner takes up the issue of language names and language policies used throughout the collection in Ch. 3 by focusing on Persian, Farsi, Dari, and Tajiki by exploring the historical continuities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in shaping modern attitudes towards standard Persian.

Section 2 takes the Central Asian Republics of the Former Soviet Union as its focus and begins with William Fierman's study on language shift in Kazakhstan. Fierman examines attempts to reverse Kazakh language shift since the late 1980s and explores potential successes in re-establishing Kazakh-Russian diglossia. In Ch. 6, Birgit Schlyter examines the language situation in Uzbekistan, focusing on recent political developments in the country alongside an analysis of language standardization and reform of the Uzbek language. Uzbek is also the central concern of Ch. 7 by William Fierman, who takes a broader look at the status of the language in the other newly independent countries of Central Asia: Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. Fierman begins by looking at factors that have affected the entire Central Asia region before turning his attention to the chances Uzbek has of survival in education and media environments in the four countries of his study.

Section 3 consists of three chapters that take a historical perspective when dealing with the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Pashto, Punjabi, and Balochi languages. In Ch. 8, Robert Nichols looks at Pashto language policy as governments and communities negotiated both official and unofficial language policies and practices, through an analysis of the choices made by state and social actors in Afghanistan, colonial India, and postcolonial Pakistan. In Ch. 9, Jeffrey M. Diamond takes an historical perspective on contemporary language policy in the regions around Afghanistan by looking at the formation of early British colonial attitudes and policies concerning languages in the northwest Indian regions bordering Afghanistan during the middle of the nineteenth century. Ch. 10, by Brian Spooner, provides a detailed description of the variety of processes involved in Balochi language change by reviewing the history of the language as well as current policy in South-Central and Central Asia where the language is spoken.

Section 4 is made up of Cynthia Groff's chapter, “Resources for the study of language policies and languages of Afghanistan and its neighbours,” and a conclusion by Harold F. Schiffman. The former surveys print and electronic resources available in English for those interested in the language policies and languages of Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries. The resources include background and general information on the region and its languages, methods by which scholars can locate resources, as well as a bibliography that allows scholars to locate the sources by area of interest. In the conclusion, Schiffman revisits the goal set out in the preface, which was to provide an updated picture of language use and language policy in the region and assesses the attempt to define a model of multilingualism that could be used to characterize the region as a whole. In doing so, Schiffman draws attention to the fact that researchers cannot agree on how to characterize linguistic cultures in the region. He remains firmly within a tradition that sees language policy as socially constructed, albeit without borrowing from more ethnographic approaches that emphasize human agency in language policy.