Recent years have seen several general introductions to the study of endangered languages, aimed primarily at readers with no special training in linguistics. This is true of Dalby's book as well, and he succeeds in providing the general public with a highly readable account of a current and important linguistic topic.

This is a study of dialogues performed in improvisational (“improv”) theater. Improv actors work without scripts, using mime and dialogue to come to a working agreement about cast of characters, setting, and plot, usually within a few interactional turns. Their performances are thus an ideal site for studying how framing works: how interactants come to a mutual understanding of what is going on that is shaped by and subsequently shapes their contributions. Although it does not quite meet its ambitious theoretical goals, the book is well worth reading, both for the descriptions and examples of a fascinating set of language games and for Sawyer's intriguing suggestions about what we can learn from them.

What is unique about education for the “indigenous” children, those who belong to colonized ethnic groups? Given its special limitations and opportunities, how can indigenous education effectively address the needs of these children and their communities? With an overall focus on this second question, Francis & Reyhner address the first question in Part 1, laying a foundation for both the practical classroom strategies and the curriculum and materials suggestions elaborated in Part 2. Their preface states: “The idea that language learning and literacy can be enriched with the inclusion of indigenous languages is what this book is about.”

Peter Trudgill & Jean Hannah, International English: A guide to varieties of Standard English. 4th ed. London: Arnold; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. i–xv, 1–153. Pb $22.95.

This book provides a delightful survey of the global variety of pronunciation and usage of English as an educated standard. It focuses on the phonetics of the various Englishes, especially on the vowels, where so much of the variability resides, and on differences in usage, lexical and syntactic as well as orthographic. Although this small volume necessarily deals with most topics briefly, it includes a wealth of detail.

When I have a dinner party, it's a matter of great importance to me that all the places are set with the same tableware. It's the same at a restaurant – a group of people sitting down for dinner should be served on the same dishes. It's neurotic, I know. But aside from some primitive sense of symmetrical comfort, the plates tell you much about the meal that is to follow: Fine porcelain sets expectations of grace and elegance; brightly colored stoneware establishes a casual ambience; and simple plates communicate a utilitarian attitude to the ensuing meal. The form serves as a gatekeeper, announcing at the outset the intended clientele. If a family with small children in search of cheeseburgers and fries wanders by chance into an establishment that places Royal Doulton in front them, they will know instantly that the content will not meet their expectations. Form matters, and content is partly conveyed by the form.

Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. Pp. xvii, 485. HB $75.00.

Language in South Africa (LinSA) is a very handsome book, beautifully edited, carefully proofread, and produced on thick paper in elegant fonts. It is in fact the same book, although revised and updated, as Language and social history: Studies in South African sociolinguistics (Mesthrie 1995). Just looking at the two volumes, side by side on my desk, I could write an essay on publishing and face validity. I am happy that this book has found an international publisher, because it deserves wider reading and better promotion (I never saw the first book reviewed or promoted), but the easy conclusion that the book under review is a better book is not necessarily warranted. As the Irish say about their horses, handsome is as handsome does, and both volumes do handsomely indeed.

This book uses a feminist, poststructuralist perspective to examine the relationships among gender, second language acquisition and multilingualism. It is a welcome addition to the study of these topics, which are usually examined separately. Gender is rarely considered in research on second language acquisition, and most studies of language and gender are conducted in monolingual contexts. This volume proposes a new interdisciplinary approach to these issues which “strives to theorize and to investigate the role of language in the production of gender relations, and role of gender dynamics in language learning and use” (p. 22).

As I reflect on what is distinctive about this book, the word “seamless” comes to mind. Having experienced my share of multi-authored “readers,” pieced together around a broad subject representing diverse and sometimes conflicting, even contradictory, approaches, I find it refreshing to encounter an anthology that succeeds in introducing major questions in which leading scholars are currently engaged, and presenting them in sufficient detail and sophistication to serve as an invitation to join in the work.

Outlining potential applications of their politeness model toward the end of their seminal essay, Brown & Levinson wrote:

[Our] analysis focusing on the non-arbitrary order evident in linguistic styles allows for the relationship between language styles and social structure to be spelled out in detail. It is along these lines that we hope to be able to use our model of the universals of linguistic politeness to characterise the cross-cultural differences in ethos, the general tone of social interaction in different societies. (1987 [1978]:252–3)

In a response to this invitation that may well be seen, in a broader context, as a statement as political as it is scientific, the 12 original contributions to this volume begin to chart this terrain for two neighboring societies/cultures/languages: Greek and Turkish.

The analysis of classroom discourse dates back at least to Sinclair & Coulthard's (1975) often-cited study, which inspired researchers to examine patterns of student-teacher interaction. In particular, their description of a typical classroom interactional pattern, the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE), inspired further research that focused on issues of control and how interaction is structured. Cazden's (1988) volume influenced a further generation of researchers to ask questions about how patterns of language use reveal what counts as knowledge and learning.

As stated in the Introduction, this edited volume aims to achieve two overlapping goals: to celebrate the diverse set of research falling under the label “language and social interaction” (LSI), and to honor the work and teachings of Robert Hopper, who died in 1998. Toward the first goal, the book begins, following the Introduction, with 32 original essays divided into 4 parts: “Orienting to the field of language and social interaction,” “Talk in everyday life,” “Talk in institutional settings,” and “Emerging trajectories: Body, mind, and spirit.” The contributors are largely researchers well known for their work in the area of conversation analysis (CA), including Emanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Paul Drew, John Heritage, Anita Pomerantz, Chuck Goodwin, and Gene Lerner, but the articles also cross disciplinary borders to incorporate research on cognitive processing, gesture, speech evaluations, sociolinguistic variables (e.g., gender), and ethnography. To meet the second goal, the volume not only brings together a mixture of Hopper's former students and colleagues, but it also ends with a fifth part, titled “Robert Hopper: Teacher and scholar,” which is devoted to more personal messages about Hopper and his work, including a final chapter with his acceptance speech for the National Communication Association mentorship award. This last section of the book brings the total number of chapters to 39 and the number of pages to more than 600 (including the Index).

It is an astonishing fact that the dynamo producing some of the most powerful scholarship on the history of the English language is not even in Indo-European territory. Under the inspired leadership of Professor Matti Rissanen, Helsinki has reached an unprecedented level of effort in this field, and, when Rissanen retired in 2001, Terttu Nevalainen became his successor as director of the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English. This volume celebrates her elevation to her new role and, at the same time, her fiftieth birthday.

Publications received.

Publications received.

An edited, modern edition of the Jesuit Horacio Carochi's Arte de la lengua Mexicana con la declaracion de los adverbios della from 1645 has been eagerly awaited by scholars with an interest in Mesoamerican culture in general, and by those interested in the Nahautl language in particular. Carochi's grammar on what nowadays is called “Classical Nahuatl” is undisputedly the finest of all grammars produced in the centuries following the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards in 1521. Its clear and concise explanations of all aspects of Nahuatl grammar are in many respects unparalleled even to this day. The problem up until now has been to get hold of a copy of either the 1892 edition or the facsimile edition of 1983. They are both out of print and somewhat hard to read because they require some familiarity with older Spanish. The volume under review remedies all this.

In this Editor's Note I am delighted to announce the appointment of a new editor-in-chief of Language in Society, Barbara Johnstone of Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Johnstone has for a number of years been a member of the Editorial Board of this journal, and readers will all know her distinguished and varied body of sociolinguistic work. Professor Johnstone will begin receiving manuscripts, books for review, and other communications beginning January 1, 2005.

By the end of the twentieth century, Wales had become a hotbed of language planning. The sharp decline experienced by the Welsh language in the first half of the century had given way to a state of “level maintenance.” The Welsh Language Act of 1993 has brought about marked improvements in the language's profile and in people's attitudes toward bilingualism. Language planning in Wales has created significant interest in other parts of Europe and around the world in other minority language communities hoping to achieve something of the Welsh successes of recent years. Nevertheless, if there have been important accomplishments, much still remains to be done to turn Wales into a truly bilingual society. The edited collection Language revitalization is an excellent, state-of-the-art volume by top specialists who analyze in detail what has been accomplished and identify remaining challenges.

Its title and back-panel blurb are somewhat misleading: Faiths in their pronouns reflects a field of scholarship completely removed from the evidentiary standards to which sociolinguistic researchers are accustomed. This review therefore approaches the work with two broad questions in mind. First, how is scholarship from sociolinguistics transformed and utilized by other fields of study? And second, what can social scientists glean from various projects of “humanism” that bring to the forefront linguistic phenomena such as pronouns?

Publications received.

In Bernard Spolsky's article “Reassessing Maori regeneration”, Language in Society 32(4), endnote 48, p. 569, there is a reference to “Spolsky 1999”. This should read “Spolsky & Shohamy (1999).”