This contribution to Arabic sociolinguistics contains papers on: nationalism and the Arabic language; language, nation and state in Algeria; language loyalty in Algerian immigrants' children in France; orthographic and social differentiation in the court records of Ottoman Damascus; women in Egyptian obituaries; generations of change in Sudanese name-giving; talking to machines in Arabic; sociolinguistic dimensions of Arabic jokes; speaking fusha in Cairo; attitudinal reactions to language change in an urban setting; the situation of Arabic in Israel; medieval Arabic as a form of social contrast; and dialect definition with reference to Yemeni dialects of Arabic.