Languages and varieties in close contact in a language community may be functionally stabilised, or they may compete and change their relative sociolinguistic position over time, due to external and internal factors. They may also be exposed to mutual structural interference, by language users¿ borrowing and mixing of words and features from the two (or more) basic varieties, or by language planning efforts, or again, as products of creative literature.The contributions in this volume, edited by Gunvor Mejdell and Lutz Edzard present sociolinguistic case studies from a variety of languages and language situations/communities. The focus is on the presence of more than one variety being in use in the language community and the relationship between them in terms of status and prestige - thus the notions of High vs. Low varieties. The cases cover situations of bi- and multilingualism, diglossia, and standard language with dialects. A number of contributions discuss historical cases, such as Latin and Middle Arabic, Old Irish and Ottoman Turkish, while others discuss contemporary cases, such as modern Arabic, Czech, Hindi, and Norwegian.With Contributions by: Bernt Brendemoen, Johannes den Heijer, Madiha Doss, Lutz Edzard, Karen Gammelgaard, Kristin F. Hagemann, Ernst Håkon Jahr, Tore Janson, Jérôme Lentin, Gunvor Mejdell, Jan Erik Rekdal, and Claus Peter Zoller