This book looks at the external history of French from its Latin origins to the present day through some of the analytical frameworks developed by contemporary sociolinguistics. Although French is one of the most highly standardised of the world's languages and the author invites us to see the language as heterogeneous, rather than a monolithic entity. After an introductory section which examines the dialectalisation of Latin in Gaul, the four central chapters of the book are constructed around the basic processes involved in standardisation as identified by E. Haugen: the selection of norms, the elaboration of function, codification and acceptance. These provide a useful grid for relating developments in French with those in other languages. The concluding chapter deals with language variability and the wide gulf that has now developed between French used for formal purposes and that used in everyday speech, and suggests that standardisation is an on going rather than a finite process. Concentrating on ordinary speakers of the language, rather than the statesmen or great authors as agents of change, the book combines a traditional `history of the language' approach with a sociolinguistic framework to provide a broad and comparative overview of the problem of language standardisation.