Reviewed by Marián Sloboda, Charles University, Prague

Receptive multilingualism is sometimes known by other names, such as polyglot discourse, semicommunication, or passive bilingualism. In this volume, receptive multilingualism refers to both (i) a type of communication in which speakers of different—but usually closely related— languages use their own languages and are able to understand each other more or less well, and (ii) the ability to understand another language without being able to use it for speaking or writing.

It is not surprising that this volume is edited by Europeans. The language policy of the European Union supports the development of receptive linguistic skills as a means of respecting and preserving linguistic diversity while remaining a coherent community. In this vein, several contributors mention receptive multilingualism in Germanic, Romance, or Slavic languages as an alternative to using English as a lingua franca. Moreover, research into receptive multilingualism has had a long tradition in Europe, especially in the Scandinavian countries in which mutually intelligible Germanic languages have been widely used for centuries.

An asset of this volume is that it examines receptive multilingualism on five dimensions: (i) its historical aspects (two contributions), (ii) its roles as a discursive or communicative phenomenon (six contributions), (iii) the testing of mutual understanding in closely related languages (two contributions), (iv) analyses of linguistic and cognitive preconditions for written receptive multilingualism (three contributions), and (v) didactic aspects (one contribution as well as parts of several others).

One shortcoming of this volume is that its focus may be too broad: the relevance of two papers is not entirely clear. Nicole Baumgarten and Juliane House’s ‘Speaker stances in native and non-native English conversation: I + verb constructions’ is only indirectly related to receptive multilingualism. It lists types of I plus verb constructions in English conversations by native and nonnative speakers of English. Rosita Schjerve–Rindler and Eva Vetter deal with multilingualism in the Habsburg Empire in ‘Linguistic diversity in Habsburg Austria as a model for modern European language policy’. They explicitly note their lack of information on receptive multilingualism in the Habsburg Empire. Although an interesting chapter in itself, it is unclear why this paper is part of this volume. Nevertheless, many of the other contributions provide rich insight into the multifaceted phenomenon of receptive multilingualism.

This volume highlights the relevance of receptive multilingualism for language policy and learning. Despite its title, the contributors limit their discussion to Germanic languages and German-French communication in Switzerland, although receptive multilingualism has also been observed in Romance, Slavic, and some South African (e.g. Nguni) languages. However, the methods and results presented here are generalizable to other language groups.