Reviewed by Asya Pereltsvaig, Stanford University

This book is a collection of articles exploring the core methodological and theoretical issues in linguistic cartography. The spatial variation of language is increasingly more interesting for both descriptive and theoretical linguists, as well as geographers, cartographers, anthropologists, and others. Visualization of language in space is also growing in its significance, as it is a precondition for correct interpretation of data by sociolinguists, dialectologists, typologists, and geolinguists. Moreover, with the availability of zoomable Google maps, Google Earth, and geographic information system (GIS) tools, old-style hand-drawn maps of languages or language families are no longer acceptable. This book provides a much needed discussion of issues involving the production of high-tech, accurate, and linguistically relevant language maps. The main issues addressed are what must be considered when drawing a map and how such problems have been tackled so far.

The book consists of an introduction followed by four parts: ‘Maps and the conceptualization of space’, ‘Traditions’, ‘Computerization’, and ‘Applications’. A separate volume contains all of the maps and a bibliographic overview of all of the atlases mentioned in the handbook. This list is extremely valuable as it represents probably the most important linguistic map collection in the world.

The first part of the book contains Chs. 1–7 and addresses the principles of language mapping and their dependence on an understanding of linguistic space. Specific issues include map projection, the impact of color, the semiotic character of maps, and the concepts of physical, social, and individual space.

The second part, containing Chs. 8–17, examines linguistic cartography’s past and present state, either by language (e.g. German, Dutch, Flemish, British English, North American English, Japanese), language family (e.g. North Germanic, Romance language of Europe, Romance languages of the Americas, Slavic languages), or nation. A separate chapter is dedicated to mapping linguistic typology. While the focus of these chapters is on reporting the outcomes of individual traditions, taken together they also present an overview of the worldwide potential of linguistic data.

The third part contains Chs. 18–25 and examines such current developments in linguistic mapping as digital editions of maps, internet-based analysis, quantification, GIS techniques, and map animations. While some of the discussion is bound to become outdated rather quickly, most linguists will find it extremely useful, especially for bridging the terminological gap between linguists and cartographers.

The fourth part (Chs. 26–32) contains a wealth of information on how linguistic phenomena can be combined with non-linguistic facts, such as genetics, infrastructure, or sociodemographic variables.

This book is accessibly written and contains a cornucopia of black-and-white and full-color maps. It is a comprehensive manual serving the interests of a variety of readers and filling a gap in ongoing linguistic discourse. The separation of the handbook into two volumes—text and maps—enables maps to be referenced in more than one chapter. It also facilitates the simultaneous reading of the text and the associated maps and eliminates the need to be constantly turning pages. Most importantly, it invites the reader to flip through a wide-ranging selection of maps and to draw inspiration from them.