The impetus for this book came from the publication of Language in the USA (Ferguson and Heath 1981) and Language in the British Isles (Trudgill 1984). This volume is a companion and complement to these two. The purpose of Language in Australia is to provide a comprehensive account of the present linguistic situation in Australia, primarily from a sociolinguistic perspective. There are at present no other books which offer such a broad survey of the language situation in Australia, although there are now works which cover selected aspects of it, for example, Clyne (1976), a sample of studies on Australian English, migrant and Aboriginal languages, Clyne (1982) on the position of community languages, Clyne (1985) on language contact, Blair and Collins (1989) on varieties of Australian English, and the surveys of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages by Dixon and Blake (1979), Dixon (1980), Blake (1981), and Yallop (1982). These and other publications are, however, important indications of the recent considerable interest in the languages of Australia.

This volume is divided into five parts. The first four contain chapters dealing with Australia's indigenous and non-indigenous languages and the fifth is devoted to public policy and social issues related to the languages of Australia.