The Pacific is historically an area of enormous linguistic diversity, where talk figures as a central component of social life. Pacific communities also represent diverse contact zones -- between indigenous and introduced institutions and ideas, between local actors and outsiders, and involving difference lingua francas and colonial and local language varieties. Contact between colonial and postcolonial governments, religious institutions, and indigenous communities has spurred profound social change, irrevocably transforming linguistic ideologies -- reflexive sensibilities about languages and language use -- and practices. Drawing on ethnographic and linguistic analyses, this volume examines situations of intertwined linguistic and cultural change unfolding in specific Pacific locations in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Its overarching concern is with the multiple ways that processes of historical change have shaped and been shaped by linguistic ideologies held by Pacific peoples and other agents of change. The essays demonstrate that language and linguistic practices are linked to changing consciousness of self and community through notions of agency, morality, affect, authority, and authenticity.