A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy Practices: Power In and Out of Print. Rebecca Rogers. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. Pp. 232. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Rogers' book is about language, literacies, ideologies, and power in family literacy practices and how these interplay paradoxically to impact on individuals' literate view of themselves and on their relationships to institutions such as school. Her critical ethnographic study centers around a mother and daughter in an urban African American family labeled as low income and low literate. They negotiate language and literacy in their home and community “proficiently, critically and strategically” (p. xiii), but the effect of schooled literacy leads them to view themselves as literate failures. Rogers' fine-tuned critical analysis illuminates how schooled literacy is embedded within the primary discourse of home and how it is both embodied and resisted through their literacy work and their identities as a mother and an adolescent who evoke conflicting subjectivities.

CORPORA AND LANGAUGE LEARNERS. Guy Aston, Silvia Bernardini, and Dominic Stewart (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. 311. $119 cloth.

The papers in this volume come from the fifth TaLC meeting in Bertinoro, Italy, in 2002 and address a range of issues related to using corpora for language learning and teaching. The introductory chapter by the three editors provides an overview of the book and also recaps the conference discussion between Sinclair and Widdowson regarding the nature of authentic language and its place in language instruction. The main portion of the book is divided into three sections: “Corpora by Learners,” “Corpora for Learners,” and “Corpora with Learners.” These three sections are framed by two chapters: one by Hoey on lexical priming and a final chapter by Fletcher on using the web as a resource for creating corpora.

THIRD LANGUAGE LEARNERS: PRAGMATIC PRODUCTION AND AWARENESS. Maria Pilar Safont Jordá. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. viii + 184. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This volume reports on a study of pragmatic instruction among third language learners in a foreign language (FL) context. Over half of the volume is devoted to laying out the theoretical background; the rest focuses on an empirical study. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the field of third language acquisition that points out differences between it and SLA research. Especially interesting is the literature review, which presents research conducted in Spain on third language acquisition. This is followed by a comprehensive look at bilingualism. Chapter 2 offers an outline of research in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, organized around three main approaches: relevance theory, politeness theory, and speech-act theory. An argument for the importance of pragmatic instruction is also developed. The chapter ends with a discussion of relevant research on the speech act of requesting (particularly the production of requests) by FL learners. Chapter 3 closes the theoretical framework with an in-depth presentation of the Valencian community and its language learning and use. This is a very interesting chapter for readers unfamiliar with the language richness of this community.

Publications received.

LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHER EDUCATION: A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH. Margaret R. Hawkins (Ed.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp. ix + 204. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This book, according to the editor, “took shape from discussions among language teacher educators” who were interested in “reconceptualizing and redefining their practices” (p. 3) in order to reflect a shift from viewing language learning as an object to be dissected on paper to a view of language learning as discourses embedded in and shaped by situated social situations. It was, therefore, not surprising to discover that the chapters in this edited volume are all framed within a common sociocultural perspective that views language not as monolithic but as composed of many different social languages or discourses. Traditionally, language instruction, whether it be the teaching of traditional foreign languages, English as a foreign language or English as a second language, has focused on teaching grammatical structures and has been centered around teaching one correct form.

INVESTIGATIONS IN INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Alex Housen and Michel Pierrard (Eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. ix + 568. $165.20 cloth.

This volume is a compilation of revised and expanded papers from the 2004 Colloquium on “Instructed Second Language Learning/L'appropriation d'une langue second en milieu guidé.” Nearly all of the assembled papers report on empirical studies that investigate second language (L2) production or acquisition by language learners in a range of formal instructional contexts, from elementary school immersion classes to adult and university foreign language courses. Following the editors' introduction, the 17 subsequent chapters are organized into four sections: (a) investigating cognitive and processing mechanisms in instructed SLA, (b) investigating the role and effects of form-focused instruction, (c) investigating the role and effects of interaction and communication-focused instruction, and (d) comparing the effects of instructed and naturalistic SLA contexts. Space constraints limit a thorough discussion of each of the papers, but a few noteworthy examples from each section will be discussed here.

MEANING IN LANGUAGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS (2nd ed.). Alan Cruse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii + 441. $29.95 paper.

This volume, which has been only moderately revised from the first edition (a couple of important exceptions will be mentioned later), is divided into four parts. The first is titled “Fundamental Notions” and consists of four chapters: “Introduction,” which introduces the subbranches of the field (e.g., lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, linguistic pragmatics) and its relations to other fields; “Logical Matters,” which introduces basic concepts like proposition, entailment, and scope; “Types and Dimensions of Meaning,” which concerns aspects of descriptive (or referential) meaning such as vagueness and specificity as well as nondescriptive meaning (associative and social meanings); and “Compositionality,” a brief discussion of this fundamental notion and some of the difficulties associated with it.

A DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS. Joan Swann, Ana Deumert, Theresa Lillis, and Rajend Mesthrie. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 368. $28.00 paper.

This book is intended as a resource for sociolinguists and scholars in related fields who deal with sociolinguistic concepts. Though not specifically aimed at the field of SLA, this book is a valuable resource for scholars in that field.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF MEANING: IDEAS FOR A PHILOSOPHICAL GRAMMAR. Michele Prandi. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xviii + 520. $162.00 cloth.

This volume is an attempt to develop a philosophical grammar, one that separates out and unifies the contributions to meaning from syntax, the lexicon, and conceptual structure, and one within which figures of speech such as metonymy and metaphor—conflictual complex meanings—can be explored and analyzed. These are forms of expression that the author views as neglected by philosophers and linguistics (although the work of Lakoff and other cognitive linguists would be one exception). The grammar itself is given in completely descriptive, informal terms.

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.

BEYOND NATURE-NURTURE: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF ELIZABETH BATES. Michael Tomasello and Dan Slobin (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. ii + 339. $89.95 cloth.

This volume has been compiled both to review and assess Bates's contribution to the field of child language and to demonstrate that her influence and the ideas she stimulated live on and are being pursued by her colleagues. After an introduction by the editors, a brief compilation of some of Bates's aphorisms—for which she was justifiably famous—and her full curriculum vitae, the volume is divided into five parts, each of which addresses one of Bates's interests.

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.

NON-WESTERN EDUCATIONAL TRADITIONS: INDIGENOUS APPROACHES TO EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT AND PRACTICE (3rd ed.). Timothy Reagan. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xiii + 308. $36.00 paper.

Within the field of applied linguistics, globalization expresses itself most clearly in two phenomena: (a) the increase of cultural and linguistic diversity in urban centers around the world and (b) the rapid spread of English as a global language fueled by the perception of many policy-makers, educators, and parents that English proficiency is a prerequisite for social and economic advancement. Both of these phenomena have increased the level of cross-cultural contact within the educational system. Teachers in Western contexts are now teaching students who come from many different cultural and educational traditions. Similarly, as countries around the world compete to promote English proficiency, teachers and students in these countries are increasingly coming into contact with the cultural traditions and educational assumptions embodied in English language curricula and personified in teachers who come from English-speaking countries.

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.

Publications received.

Acknowledgment of readers for volume 28.

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.