The politics of language in South Africa is a selected collection of essays that contains the proceedings of a colloquium organised by Vic Webb, the guest editor, as part of the combined annual meeting of the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association and the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa, hosted by the University of Pretoria and held at Dikhololo from 6 to 8 July 2005. Additionally, a number of relevant conference papers presented outside the colloquium are also included.