RECLAIMING THE LOCAL IN LANGUAGE POLICY AND PRACTICE. A. Suresh Canagarajah (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxx + 297. $32.50 paper.

This volume is a collection of 12 articles that examine the place of local knowledge within the context of globalization as it relates to language policy and practice. The introductory chapter begins by problematizing the concept of globalization and illustrating how some fields in the humanities and social sciences are redefining their approaches to it. The chapter then summarizes the main ideas of the 12 articles that follow, which are divided into four sections.

TO THE LEXICON AND BEYOND: SOCIOLINGUISTICS IN EUROPEAN DEAF COMMUNITIES. Mieke Van Herreweghe and Myriam Vermeerbergen (Eds.). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2004. Pp. ix + 285. $65.00 paper.

Van Herreweghe and Vermeerbergen's co-edited book is the 10th volume in the Sociolinguistics in deaf communities series published by Gallaudet University Press. As I have noted in earlier book notices in SSLA, this series constitutes the leading collection of published scholarly and academic work dealing explicitly with sociolinguistic issues in deaf communities around the world. This latest volume is an interesting and valuable addition to the earlier works in the series and provides significant insights into sociolinguistic issues in a number of lesser-known (at least in the North American context) natural sign languages.

OPTIMALITY THEORY: CONSTRAINT INTERACTION IN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. xi + 289. $69.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This book is very similar to the manuscript (written by the same authors and bearing the same title) that has been circulating among phonologists since 1993. As mentioned by the authors in the preface, “those familiar with an earlier version of the text will not find new notions and notations here” (p. ix). For this reason, the 2004 publication date may seem anachronistic, as it does not reflect the state of Optimality Theory (OT) in 2004, but rather in 1993. The most notable difference between the two versions of this text is the disappearance of two sections (on variable rules and stochastic grammars and on declarative phonology) that were to be added in the manuscript form.

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION, AND DISCOURSE. Joseph A. Foley (Ed.). New York: Continuum, 2004. Pp. xii + 337. $150.00 cloth, $49.95 paper.

This 13-chapter volume evolved from a systemic functional congress on linguistics and education in 1999 in Singapore. Most chapters were presented there, but the editor added others to better represent the development of discourse. The outline below gives the author(s) and gist of each chapter.

DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS: FROM PHENOTYPES TO ETIOLOGIES. Mabel L. Rice and Steven F. Warren (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. ix + 410. $89.95 cloth.

The study of genetics and language disorders attempts to inform researchers and practitioners as to the possible genetic basis for a variety of language deficits. By studying specific subsets of children with disabilities and identifying the general phenotype (behavioral manifestations) with respect to linguistic skill, researchers attempt to establish a link between genetics and language ability. The present book is an edited compendium of research presented in the May 2002 Merrill Conference titled, “The Relationship of Genes, Environments, and Developmental Language Disorders: Research for the 21st Century.” Investigators in the fields of genetics, linguistics, and language disorders contributed chapters to this volume.

Publications received.