Based on an original plan, this series is intended for modern language students and aims to promote the interdisciplinary study of language and of the sociocultural context in which language is used and evolves. The books are of an introductory nature and is addressed to all who are concerned with the study of France and its language and are of special value to two broad categories: modern language students who are engaged in a new discipline involving new concpets and requiring them to aquire a new technical lexis and a new style of writing or speech and students of social sciences and business studies taking a modern language course requiring application of the principles or theory already acquired in their primary discipline. The present volume is one of a series based on the fact that language as a means of communication is bound up inextricably with the society that uses it. While the othres concentrate on particular facets of the socio-cultural context in which the foreign language is used and developed, the emphasis in this book is on results, in the sense that it presents a comprehensive picture of the many varieties of French currently in use, not only in France but though