Clyne has shown great skill in compiling and editing this volume; it contains a wealth of information on language planning and language policies, and will be widely cited in the future. The book contains fourteen case studies, apparently specially commissioned, on corpus language planning from a wide range of societies in a number of global regions: Southeast and East Asia (China, the Philippines, Vietnam), Western Europe (Belgium, Germany, Norway), Eastern Europe (Hungary, Moldavia, Ukraine), the Balkans (the former Yugoslavia), the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, Jordan), Southern Africa (South Africa), and Central America (Nicaragua), as well as the Jewish diaspora (in the case of Yiddish).

Dennis R. Preston (ed.), Needed research in American dialects. Publications of the American Dialect Society, 88. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. vii, 261. Hb $20.00.

This collection is the fourth in a series of volumes titled Needed research in American dialects, published by the American Dialect Society (ADS) in 20-year intervals since 1943. In addition, the book represents the continuing evolution of the state of American dialectology and related sociolinguistics as outlined in Dennis Preston's edited collection, American Dialect Research (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993), published in commemoration of the ADS centennial in 1989. The current volume is a striking compilation for several reasons. First, it (like the ADS in general) is to be commended for continuing with many of the themes first outlined in the 1943 volume, currently available as part of PADS 31 (1964), which also includes the 1963 Needed Research volume. This commitment to solving research questions and completing research and publication tasks outlined early in the society's history is remarkable in an era when it is all too easy to substitute research on the latest fashionable topic for good solid scholarship on basic questions and sustained research that provides valuable time depth. At the same time, though, the current volume is not fettered by its commitment to historical continuity, and coverage of newer research areas whose importance has been recognized over the past couple of decades is comprehensive as well. Finally, Preston is to be commended for the slate of authors he has brought together in this volume. The chapters are written by leading researchers in the areas covered, and the authors are themselves responsible for some of the chief advances in the field since the publication of the 1983 volume.

Paul Chilton, Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London & New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. xiv, 226. Hb $125.00, Pb $35.11.

Analysing political discourse does not merely address issues concerning either politics of language or languages of politics; it offers practical analyses of actual specimens of political text and talk. The discourses analyzed, in both the British and international arenas, include political interviews, parliamentary language, politicians' speeches, and discourses that concern foreigners and religion. The analysis is linguistically oriented, grounded in a theory of language and politics. In this review, I shall first give an overview of the linguistic theory on which the author bases his analysis and then select two actual analyses for illustration. Finally, I shall say a few words about the style of this volume.

There is little doubt that critical applied linguistics is one of the most controversial and contentious areas in linguistics today. This new book, Critical applied linguistics: A critical introduction, is an attempt to provide a much-needed detailed and comprehensive introduction to this emergent approach. It is written by Alastair Pennycook of the University of Technology, Sydney, who has been one of the major proponents of critical applied linguistics during the past decade.