- `Introduction’ in R. Mesthrie (ed.) Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics. Cape Town: David Philip. 1995. pp xv-xx.
- `Foreword’ in Straatpraatjes: Language, Politics and Popular Culture in Cape Town, 1909-1922. , (ed.) M. Adhikari, Pretoria: van Schaiks. 1996. pp viii-xii.
- `Introduction’ (with K. McCormick) in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Special Issue 136: `Postapartheid South Africa’. 1999.
- `Introduction’. In R. Mesthrie (ed.) Language in South Africa. 1-8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002.
- `Introduction: varieties of English in Africa and south and southeast Asia’. In E. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie and C. Upton A Handbook of Varieties of English vol 1: Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 805-812. 2004. ISBN 3 – 11 – 017532 – 0.
- ‘Introduction: the sociolinguistic enterprise’. In R. Mesthrie (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 1- 14. 2011.
Long prefaces and introductions