This volume contains the contributions presented at the first plenary conference on Integrational Linguistics held in London in 2000, an event at which I participated. The basic tenets of Integrational Linguistics were developed by Roy Harris at Oxford in the 1980s and 1990s; while many aspects of this approach remain a matter of debate, its assumptions and practices have become sufficiently firm to be the subject of a couple of introductory texts (Harris 1998, Toolan 1996). Harris's agenda has been “to challenge the monumental complacency of mainstream linguistics” (p. 3) by pointing out that the discipline is no more than an elaborate edifice built on a myth.

This is the eleventh volume in the Blackwell series “Handbooks in Linguistics.” Of the previous ten, one was devoted to general sociolinguistics (Coulmas 1997), making this the first in the series to deal with a specific branch of sociolinguistics. For many scholars, variation theory (including the study of change in progress) is the heartland of sociolinguistics, though not everyone would go as far as Chambers 2003 in equating sociolinguistic theory with variation theory alone. As the earlier Blackwell handbook suggests, the field of sociolinguistics is broader than variation theory per se. However, considering the richness of the handbook under review, one can understand why variation theory should hold the high ground in sociolinguistics. The handbook comprises 29 chapters, divided into five sections: methodologies, linguistic structure, social factors, contact, and language and societies.

Literacy practices as social acts and Literacy and motivation share an interest in the question of what engages children in reading. Both are relevant to our political times, when the federal government micromanages literacy education in schools. The U.S. federal initiative “No Child Left Behind” gave rise to the Reading First grants, and both are designed to “get kids reading at grade level.” Reading First ended up not including “motivation” as a rationale for funding. The government's preoccupation with phonics instruction has superseded the more important issue of what makes a child want (or not want) to read in the first place. Literacy and motivation is a useful corrective. However, Cynthia Lewis's Literacy practices as social acts really gets at the heart of the matter.

Jennifer Coates, Men talk: Stories in the making of masculinities. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xi, 219. Hb $59.95 Pb $29.95.

It is pleasing to see the publication of a book-length study of language and masculinity, a focus of research that literally did not exist ten years ago. But although this book is rich in its presentation of data and its description of narrative, I was disappointed. The book falls short of its goal of explicating and understanding men's talk; rather, it reifies stereotypes of men without challenging or questioning why these stereotypes exist.

Coulmas's new book, Writing systems, is intended as a textbook for use in upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses dealing with written languages and literacy from the standpoint of linguistics and anthropology. The book provides an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the linguistic analysis of writing, and it offers detailed illustrations of the world's major writing systems and their social consequences, ranging from the birth of graphic signs as mnemonics to social stratification resulting from issues of literacy in modern society. Geared particularly toward the interests of linguists, the book places strong emphasis on the multiple levels of the form-sound nexus and the structural complexities of various writing systems around the world. It is accompanied by a concise exposition of the history of writing and a review of current investigations into reading and writing in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Overall, Coulmas does a first-rate job of linking the origin, development, and spread of writing to the growing interest in the linguistically motivated analysis of writing and its relation to the mind and society. Although the chapters cut across several layers of writing analysis, the historical, educational, and ideological issues of literacy are given less attention than might be expected, owing to the author's focus on the linguistic aspects of writing. At the end of each chapter, exercises are provided for mastery of basic concepts and issues discussed.

Multimodal Discourse offers a theoretical framework for the study of communication in the modern world of multimedia. The book helps students of linguistics, cultural studies, and communication as well as journalists, photographers, designers, and others who work practically in the field of communication and design, to understand and differentiate the distinct levels of mass communication and their interaction. The authors also give an overview of the development of communication and discourse and show how this development is influenced by overall changes in society and social life. All the definitions of theoretical concepts and notions are further explained and illustrated by a great variety of examples. Linguists have shown that discourse is not only used and expressed in and/or by language; Kress & van Leeuwen also apply the term to music, architecture, and many other domains of culture. The notion of modes, however, is explained only in a very abstract way as “semiotic resources which allow the simultaneous realization of discourses and types of (inter)action” (p. 21). Media, on the other hand, are described as the material resources being used for the production. Examples of modes mentioned by the authors are music, language, and images. The medium is supposed to be the material, such as a book (6).

Eleanor Semel & Sue R. Rosner. Understanding Williams Syndrome: Behavioral patterns and interventions. Mahwah, NJ & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Pp. xxi, 456. Hb $99.95, pb $45.00.

“I never knew talent was a birth defect,” Jonas Salk has been quoted as saying about Williams Syndrome (cf. Bellugi & St. George 2001:xii), referring to the discrepancy between the extraordinary language abilities of persons with WS and their overall intellectual functioning, which usually falls within the bounds of mental retardation. The first of its kind, Semel & Rosner's very interesting sourcebook addresses the question: “How is it possible to conceptualize a group of children who test as though retarded, speak as though gifted, behave sometimes as though emotionally disturbed, and function like the learning disabled?” (p. 1). The insights into the origins and manifestations of this intriguing disorder discussed in this book have numerous theoretical and practical implications for understanding the molecular genetic and neurophysiological underpinnings of cognition, language, and sociability.

Widely impugned by an uninformed public – and even by many of those who practice it – with such derogatory terms as “Spanglish” or “Chinglish,” or “Pocho” in Spanish, codeswitching (CS) has emerged from marginal obscurity to become a major topic of interest among linguists of a wide variety of persuasions in the past 30 years. Weinreich (1953) famously denied that a switch between languages within a sentence was possible; the MLA bibliography now lists 900 titles on the subject, half of which have appeared since 1995. The present volume – the third edited by the indefatigable Rodolfo Jacobson, a pioneer in the field since the 1970s – reflects both this growth and the increasing breadth of interest that has occurred along with increasing attention to bilingualism generally in its many aspects and implications.

Since graduate school, I have seen applied linguistics (AL) treated by too many of my professors and colleagues as the bastard child of “real” linguistics – accused of being too interdisciplinary, too pedagogically oriented, and lacking in an all-encompassing theoretical framework. Sadly, even those practicing AL are sometimes apologetic or defensive about their supposed faults. In some ways, this book represents a coming-out party, a celebration of accomplishments and directions for future research and involvement.

The new handbook of language and social psychology is a collection of essays that aim to highlight the importance of linguistic factors in social psychology and to stress the role of social interaction in the study of language. It follows in the footsteps of The handbook of social psychology, published just over 10 years ago. The goal of the present volume, as stated by one of the editors (Robinson), is to promote interest in and understanding of the dual relationship between the study of language and social psychology. Robinson states that the new handbook, in contrast with the original handbook, puts more emphasis on the “five ints”: intentions and interpretations in interpersonal and intergroup interactions. The volume delivers on its promise of promoting interest and understanding. There are a number of stimulating chapters, of which some provide an overview of a research area, others a particular perspective on a problem or a synthesis of different strands of research, and still others speculations, questions, and directions for future research. The volume as a whole is invaluable as a reference book and for an overview of current research questions in language and social psychology.

Discourses in search of members is a festschrift presented to Ron Scollon on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in May 1999. The volume is so titled, writes Li, in order to “reflect and unify all of Ron's research endeavors to date, namely, the dynamic, dialectical relationship between, on the one hand, how members of a myriad of overlapping Discourses (to follow James Gee's convention) acquire legitimacy of their memberships, consciously or otherwise, and on the other hand, how such Discourses maintain their vitality and viability through self-perpetuating social practices of their members from day to day” (p. ix). The editor has reached his goal, compiling 25 contributions that address a number of related topics in four core sections: educational discourses, critical and media studies, intercultural/interdiscourse communication, and language learning and comparative poetics.

The title of this edited volume leads one to expect a timely contribution to the literature on language socialization, which has become increasingly concerned with bilingual and multilingual settings over the past decade or so. Some readers with general interests in bilingual and multilingual situations, or with special interests in education in such settings, may find this collection worthwhile. Those with a particular interest in language socialization, however, will be disappointed – and perhaps irritated to have been misled by the title. The volume's 16 chapters present a broad variety of interesting case studies, but very few among them can accurately be characterized as language socialization studies.

Discourse in late modernity purports to demonstrate the significance of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), principally a European disciplinary formation, for constructionist social theory across disciplines and social settings, and to argue for the specific importance of CDA within a broader sociology of modernity. The book is principally a work of theory-building and exemplification, meant for a broad scholarly audience. Unfortunately, however, scholars outside the CDA community will be frustrated by the book's dense and sometimes confused use of undefined technical terms, as well as by the very thin analyses of the volume's few empirical examples of complex theoretical points. Terms such as “discourse,” “structure,” and “text” are used in diverse ways, but often without apparent concern for the conflicting traditions in which they are central concepts. The book also politicizes questions of social power in ways that may alienate many readers who do not share the authors' Eurocentric politics. Finally, the writing in this volume suffers from needlessly dense and complex prose syntax. These rhetorical problems are not as minor as they may sound, for they disguise – and, thereby, ironically reveal – more substantial flaws in the core arguments of the volume.

This volume of 12 individual essays is an important step forward in the literature on child language development. As the title hints, the book follows Talking to children (Snow & Ferguson 1977). Both volumes focus on input and language acquisition. Talking to children demonstrated the importance of phenomenon of baby talk and dealt with the nature of speech addressed to young children and different parental conversational styles. The title Talking to adults gives an impression that this time, more attention will be paid to speech used by children to adults, but that is not what it seems to be. Rather, the contributors here focus on how children participate in discourse with participating structures more complex than dyads – that is, when the audience is “larger” than just the child's own mother, and when simplified registers are not necessarily used. The pioneering Talking to children, in contrast, was concerned mainly with dyadic interaction with a primary caretaker. The papers in Talking to adults aim to show that child's participation in such multiparty talk seems to contribute greatly to the pragmatic development of children. The 12 chapters give an overview of empirical research concerning the acquisition of various discursive skills: explanations and narratives, control talk, affect, humor, telling a joke, telling lies, and bilingualism.

Stanton Wortham & Betsy Rymes (eds.), Linguistic anthropology of education. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 288. Hb $69.95.

In his introduction to this volume, Stanton Wortham argues for the value of a linguistic anthropological approach to education. After all, “a society's beliefs about language – as a symbol of nationalism, a marker of differences, or a tool of assimilation – are often reproduced and challenged through educational institutions” (p. 2). So too is language used in schools in ways that, often unwittingly, reproduce the inequities in society more generally; a linguistic anthropological approach is particularly well suited to pointing out the processes by which this happens.

Abram De Swaan, Words of the world: The global language system. Cambridge: Polity Press and Blackwell, 2001. Pp. xi, 253. Hb. $33.95.

There is a global language system that is a neglected part of the overall international system, according to Abram de Swaan, chairman of the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. This book analyzes the nature of that global system in the first three chapters, followed by five chapters of case studies and ending with a chapter of “Conclusions and considerations.” The concept of a global language system has been articulated by the author in some previous articles, but the treatment here is much more systematic and complete, and as a result more impressive. In a word, this book is important and deserves very careful attention.

During the past 25 years, anthropologists, linguists, and other social scientists have taken a keen interest in delineating the nature (form and function) of play, not only among humans but also among other higher primates. The establishment of the Society for the Study of Play in the1970s, the annual meetings of its members, and the resulting publications clearly manifest this interest. Sherzer's book on speech play and verbal art is a significant addition to the extant literature on the subject. His aim is to delineate “the significance of verbal play in the intersection of language, culture, and society in relation to verbal art” (p. 1). He views speech play as an “implicit and explicit meta-commentary on everyday life and artistic performance” (1).

Many scholars and researchers doing sociolinguistics will agree that “Every language is a social product, and every society constitutes itself through language” (Coulmas 2001:563). In other words, many sociolinguists share the conviction that language should be accounted for in its social context for the simple reason that we live in reality instead of virtually. And Roger W. Shuy has set us an excellent example. Throughout his whole life, Shuy, “a living monument to the power of language in everyday life” (p. x), has attached great importance to investigating language issues in real-life encounters, insightfully claiming “that possibilities for linguistic research are everywhere, as language is used wherever we turn” (2). What is more important and more admirable is that Shuy has shown that sociolinguists can and should contribute to advancing social progress in various areas through their own research work. In other words, sociolinguistic researchers should have a social commitment to use their “linguistic ‘tool bag’ (his well-known term) to shed some light on real-world problems” (577). This finds expression in the volume under review, in which many chapters are contributed by his former students. The diversity of the topics covered provides insight into how language and various aspects of social life are closely linked together. This book should be of much interest and great value to those interested in language in society.

The 2000 Georgetown University Round Table focused on “the application of linguistics to … a full range of … professions” (p. 3). It offered tracks on education, journalism, law, medicine, technology, and other professions. The book reviewed here presents highlights from that conference: six plenary speeches, eight selected conference papers, and a closing discussion among plenary speakers, conference organizers, and audience members. The chapters are distributed fairly evenly across the range of professions identified for the conference. The plenary speakers were Shirley Brice Heath, John R. Rickford, Allan Bell, Roger W. Shuy, Richard M. Frankel, and Lee Lubbers. James E. Alatis and Heidi Hamilton were the conference chairs. In this review, I will not comment on each chapter of the book; rather, I will highlight some themes and focus on articles I found particularly relevant to them.

The question of “how second languages are learned” (Gass & Selinker 1994:1) is central to second language acquisition (SLA) research; however, although a number of longitudinal studies have been carried out examining second language (L2) grammatical development, very little attention has been devoted to L2 learners' development of pragmatic competence over time. As Achiba points out, the majority of previous studies on L2 (or interlanguage) pragmatics have observed the single-moment pragmatic realization of a group of L2 learners with similar proficiency levels and compared it with that of native speakers or L2 learners with different proficiency levels or first language (L1) backgrounds. The current paucity of knowledge regarding the developmental aspect of L2 pragmatic competence has led to calls for detailed longitudinal interlanguage pragmatic studies (cf. Kasper & Schmidt 1996, Kasper & Rose 1999). Achiba's study, which carefully observes the pragmatic development in English requestive realization of a seven-year-old Japanese girl over a period of 17 months, certainly meets these essential needs.