1. `Introduction’ in R. Mesthrie (ed.) Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics. Cape Town: David Philip.  1995. pp xv-xx.
  2.  `Foreword’ in Straatpraatjes: Language, Politics and Popular Culture in Cape Town, 1909-1922. , (ed.) M. Adhikari, Pretoria: van Schaiks. 1996. pp viii-xii.
  3. `Introduction’ (with K. McCormick) in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Special Issue 136: `Postapartheid South Africa’. 1999.
  4. `Introduction’.  In R. Mesthrie (ed.) Language in South Africa. 1-8.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  2002.
  5. `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.
  6. ‘Introduction: the sociolinguistic enterprise’.  In R. Mesthrie (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics.  Cambridge: CUP, pp. 1- 14.  2011.