This is the first of two cross-linguistic foundational volumes inaugurating the series Language and Space, which investigates spatial variation in languages and language groups. This volume attends to theories and methods, the second will explore the overarching issues related to the creation and use of maps in the investigation of linguistic distribution and variation, and later volumes will be concerned with individual languages and language groups. Following introductory essays exploring language in terms of geographical, social, political, and transnational spaces, 23 essays address issues of theory in sections devoted to linguistic approaches to space, structure and dynamics of a language space, and structure and dynamics across language spaces. The focus then turns to methodology in seven papers addressing data collection, corpus-building, data analysis, and presentation of results. Seven "exemplary" studies are then presented as illustration of the state-of-the-art and the volume concludes with examination of the methodological problems concerning areal variation in segmental phonetics and phonology, areal variation in prosody, areal variation in morphology, lexical variation in space, areal variation in syntax, and areal variation and discourse. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)