Rebecca Rogers (ed.), An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. 266, Hb $59.95, Pb $27.50.

An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education has eleven chapters, three by the editor, Rebecca Rogers. The volume attempts to apply Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to various formal and informal educational settings, and to situate CDA within a theory of learning. Most chapters begin with definitions of “central concepts,” and Rogers has sprinkled discussion prompts throughout.

Aaron A. Fox, Real country: Music and language in working-class culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Pp., 363. Hb $79.95, Pb $22.95.

The past decade has seen a spate of books about country music. Following in the footsteps of classic work by Bill Malone, a number of these recent works are outstanding, but even the best among them (Peterson 1999; Tichi 1994, 1998; Jensen 1998) have taken a Nashville-centric perspective (or, in the case of Ching 2003, anti-Nashville-centrism), exploring and interrogating the development of country as a commercial genre. Aaron Fox's Real country, by contrast, is distinctive in its detailed ethnographic exploration of country as a lived working-class reality expressed in linguistic and musical discourse forms.

Publications received through 24 April 2005.

This issue of Language in Society is the final issue in the first volume of the journal to have appeared under my editorship. I am grateful for the support of the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University. I am also very grateful to editorial assistant Craig O. Stewart and copyeditor Jane McGary, as well as to Barbara Chin, Morrell Gillette, and Robert Dreesen at Cambridge University Press.