Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas

This is the fifth volume in the series ‘Introducing linguistics’. All of the contributing authors are from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. The book is ‘a revision and adaptation’ (1) of the 2002 edition, which itself incorporated parts of another work assembled by the same editors and was published in Dutch a decade earlier.

The book is presented by the editors as a broad survey of the discipline, intended for students. It is comprised of twenty chapters and covers a wide range of topics, grouped into six parts. Part 1, ‘Language and language faculty’, contains two chapters: ‘From language to linguistics’ and ‘The language user’. These chapters lay down practically the entire gamut of basic principles and guiding assumptions of contemporary linguistics.

An interesting feature of Parts 2, 3, and 4 is that they approach language from the outside in rather than following the customary route from the inside out. That is to say, the chapters do not first focus on the smallest units of language, namely speech sounds, and then go on to look at larger units, such as text and discourse. Instead, the progression of chapters moves in the opposite direction—from discourse toward sounds, through sentences and words.

Part 2, ‘Language and interaction’, contains two chapters, ‘Discourse’ and ‘Speech acts’, paving the way for Part 3. Part 3, ‘Sentences and their meaning’, contains five chapters, covering units such as constituents and simple and complex sentences. Narrowing the focus further, Part 4, ‘Words and their meaning’, consists of three chapters on topics including lexicon, word formation, and compounds and idioms. Part 5 deals with phonetics and phonology.

Part 6, ‘Languages and communities’, broadens the focus to look at culture and how it impacts language, especially language variation, language change, and bilingualism—this last one being a hot-button issue, particularly in the context of language policy and education in many countries of the world.

Overall, this book covers practically the entire spectrum of research areas within the discipline of linguistics. The chapters are clearly written for the uninitiated and, at the same time, the authors are keen to present state-of-the-art introductions to their respective areas of specialization. Each chapter is accompanied by a succinct summary, a self-test, along with assignments and suggestions for further reading. Key terms are presented in boldface.

In the book’s preface, the editors emphasize their educational aims and note the importance of comments they received about the earlier editions in making sure that this edition is user-friendly. This book has a joint list of bibliographical references, a separate list of the sources of illustrations, and an index of key proper nouns and topics.

Reviewed by Natalie Operstein, California State University Fullerton

This book introduces element theory (ET), which assumes that the primitive units of segment organization are elements rather than features. The conceptual equivalents of elements are used in several phonological frameworks, but this introduction assumes that elements are flexible enough to be used independently of any particular theory of phonology. The book consists of a preface and five chapters.

Ch. 1, ‘A Theory of elements’, provides the conceptual background for the book by motivating the use of elements as an alternative to traditional features. The discussion essentially centers on two points. The first is that, unlike features, elements are capable of capturing the linguistic knowledge shared by both speakers and hearers; this distinguishes them from articulatorily defined features, which privilege the speaker, and from acoustically defined features, which privilege the hearer. The second point addresses the fact that, unlike most features, elements are monovalent in the sense of representing only positive properties of segments. This allows ET to avoid the pitfall of making incorrect predictions about the behavior of sounds.

The remaining chapters introduce the elements themselves. Ch. 2 ‘Elements for vowels’ introduces the resonance elements |I U A| and shows how they are used to represent vowel contrasts and phonological processes. The chapter also demonstrates how the resonance elements may be used to model the vowel system of English (received pronunciation). Ch. 3, ‘Place elements in consonants’, shows how the same elements are used to represent consonant place. In the version of ET adopted in this book, the |I| element represents palatal resonance in palatals and some coronals, the |U| element is used for labials and velars, and the |A| element for pharyngeals and some coronals; the subgroups within each group are distinguished by using the notion of headedness. The same notion is also used in representation of consonants with complex resonance, such as uvulars and labiodentals.

Ch. 4, ‘Manner elements in consonants’, introduces the remaining elements |ʔ H L|, which represent the ET alternative to laryngeal and manner features. Each element may stand for a range of properties. Specifically, the stop element |ʔ| represents occlusion in stops, nasals, and laterals, and is also found in ejectives, implosives, and laryngealized vowels. The noise element |H| represents frication in fricatives, audible release in stops, voicelessness or aspiration in obstruents, generally, and high tone in tone languages. Finally, the nasal element |L| represents nasality in nasal consonants and vowels, voicing in obstruents, and low tone in tone languages. The last chapter in the book, ‘Liquids, licensing and antagonistic elements’, explores the structure of liquids and the relationship among the elements, as well as between elements and the units of prosodic structure.

Although it is primarily an introduction to ET, this book also provides a good overview of segmental phonology. Throughout the book, elements are systematically compared with features, and ET with feature theory, with respect to their predictions about the behavior of sounds and the shape of sound systems. The book is written accessibly, frequently mentions alternative analyses of the data, and illustrates each point with abundant examples from English and other languages.

Reviewed by Natalie Operstein, California State University Fullerton

The issue of language endangerment has received increasing attention in recent years. The book under review reflects this trend by offering a thorough overview of the topic. It consists of twenty-two chapters and an introduction by the editors.

Part 1, ‘Endangered languages’, opens with a chapter by Lenore A. Grenoble, which surveys the causes of language shift and mechanisms for assessing the level of endangerment. Colette Grinevald and Michel Bert discuss differences among endangered-language communities and propose a dynamic model for classifying types of endangered-language speakers. In his chapter, David Bradley outlines the current state of endangerment among the world’s languages. Carmel O’Shannessy discusses how contact-induced change is evaluated by minority-language communities, and Naomi Palosaari and Lyle Campbell discuss endangered-language contributions to linguistic theory and typology, and the structural consequences of obsolescence for these languages’ grammars. Closing this section, Lev Michael explores some of the cultural consequences of language shift, and Bernard Spolsky surveys the social dimensions of language management.

Part 2, ‘Language documentation’, opens with a chapter by Anthony C. Woodbury, which evaluates the scholarly and community contexts of endangered-language documentation and calls for a broadly inclusive coordination of academic and popular agendas in the design of documentation projects. In their chapter, Lise M. Dobrin and Josh Berson highlight the ethical dimensions of work with endangered languages. Jeff Good surveys the collection, storage, and manipulation of primary data in language documentation. Chapters by Lisa Conathan andby David Nathan outline the principles and practices for the organization, management, and archiving of durable documentary corpus materials.

Part 3, ‘Responses’, opens with Julia Sallabank’s chapter, which considers language management issues in relation to the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. Leanne Hinton discusses the many forms language revitalization can take, and the role of linguistics in these initiatives. Friederike Lüpke looks at the role of orthography in language documentation and the various practical, linguistic, cultural, and identity-related factors that influence the development of orthographies for unwritten languages. Ulrike Mosel discusses problems typical of lexicographic work in language-documentation projects, such as the challenge of producing work which would satisfy the minority-speech community without compromising the scholarly standards of the field. In their chapter, Serafin M. Coronel-Molina and Teresa L. McCarty present case studies of curriculum design and evaluation informed by local language-planning goals, and Gary Holton discusses the potential of information technology to support language maintenance efforts.

Part 4, ‘Challenges’, opens with a chapter by Wayne Harbert that discusses the economic status of endangered-language communities and its implications for the viability of their languages. Anthony Jukes outlines the skills needed for work in language documentation and conservation, and identifies the main types of target audiences in language-documentation training courses. In her chapter, Máiréad Moriarty evaluates the potential benefits of the new role of endangered languages in the media, internet, and pop culture. Finally, Claire Bowern discusses the general principles and key stages of a language-documentation project, from finding sources of funding to the main project phases and possible outcomes.

Theoretically informed and replete with advice from practitioners in the field, this handbook will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, students, and general readers interested in language endangerment and related issues.

Reviewed by David D. Robertson, University of Victoria

Otto Zwartjes, a figure central to the recent emergence of a ‘missionary linguistics’, here examines some of the earliest extant Portuguese-language descriptions of (then) newly encountered languages, as well as of Arabic and Hebrew. Geographically themed chapters ask sets of questions about the analysis and presentation of each of several language families by Catholic missionaries, who as a group were well educated in ancient traditions of (Indo-) European grammar writing. Their productions can be challenging to analyze; Z aptly observes that ‘as often happens in missionary linguistics, the boundaries between language [description] and meta-language [analysis] are not always easy to draw’ (232).

Z consistently discovers that while the Greco-Roman tradition colored writers’ understanding of these unrelated languages—a shibboleth concept motivating modern linguists’ neglect of missionary sources, nearly all authors he investigates clearly recognized and grappled with the actual characteristics of the languages they were learning. (This is an understandable result because their intent was to preach and convert, and to train other missionaries to do likewise.) In consequence, these Portuguese documents routinely attempt to expand the Roman alphabet’s capabilities to represent unfamiliar sounds (e.g. the high central vowel in Brazilian languages) and sometimes use existing local orthographies (as for Japanese or Tamil). Another corollary of this often-overlooked attention to linguistic detail is the missionaries’ tendency to innovate grammatical terminology for phenomena never dealt with in ancient Europe (such as ergativity), and for already-recognized structures whose membership and behavior differs across linguistic families (such as prefixes). Such innovations—as the Europeans perceived them—included adopting existing metalinguistic terms such as a Japanese part-of-speech distinction.

Of similar importance are Z’s observations on some of the earliest approaches to the problem of creating Christian terminology in new environments. Because the target audience was non-European, missionaries were compelled to resort to trial and error, comparing the results they achieved from coinages and from Portuguese or Latin loans. Further cross-cultural value in the missionary grammars is evident when they include ethnographic information (cf. 140, 170).

Readers who are multilingual may get the most out of Z’s study, as he extensively quotes historical Portuguese, Latin, French, and Spanish sources, often without English translation. Comparability among the examples he cites is unfortunately inhibited by the infrequency of glossing with modern linguistic terminology. Throughout the book, Z conscientiously and appropriately points out the issue of anachronism. This is the danger of judging older studies according to present-day linguists’ practices, though in a number of passages, he evaluates particularly perceptive missionary analyses as ‘correct’ (e.g. 131, 235, 263). There is no reason not to search these old sources for their treatment of the categories now, for the most part, recognized (as in R. M. W. Dixon’s Basic linguistic theory) as general across the world’s languages, so that it is somewhat surprising when occurrences of numeral classifiers are not labeled as such (132), but overall this is an insightful and eye-opening study of an area of linguistics which will be somewhat ironically new to many readers.

Reviewed by Ksenia Shilikhina, Voronezh State University

This book comprises fourteen interviews with leading corpus linguistics scholars (namely, Guy Aston, Paul Baker, Tony Berber Sardinha, Susan Conrad, Mark Davies, Stefan Th. Gries, Ken Hyland, Stig Johansson, Sara Laviosa, Geoffrey N. Leech, William Ernest Louw, Geoffrey Sampson, Mike Scott, and John M. Swales) who present their theoretical positions and practical experience within the field of corpus research. Seven questions are addressed to all contributors; three questions concern specific areas of corpus linguistics and its applications (e.g. using corpora in translation, historical linguistics, crosslinguistic research, or teaching languages). The contributors discuss the origin of corpus linguistics, its present status, methods of corpus research, and the choice of research questions.

Responses to the question of the status of corpus linguistics reveal the diversity of views that coexist in the field. Some contributors consider corpus linguistics to be both a science and a methodology: However, not everyone supports this view: to say that corpus linguistics is a methodology is too little; to call it a science is too much.   As a compromise, Conrad suggests that corpus linguistics can be classified as ‘an approach to studying languages’ (49). It incorporates multiple projects with different research goals and different amount of effort put into the work.

The contributors discuss the controversial issue of corpus representativeness and suggest ways of improvement, e.g. increasing a corpus size or working out criteria for an adequate description of communities of language users. Another thorny question concerns the role of intuition in conducting a corpus study. It cannot be fully excluded from linguistic research; however, because intuition is unreliable, it should not precede a corpus search.

The use of corpora is not a cure-all solution for linguistics. That is the reason why in each interview there is a question about the strengths and weaknesses of corpus research. Among the strong points, the linguists name authenticity of data and availability of statistical methods of data analysis: this combination allows for studying patters of language use. Representativeness of corpora remains the major weakness of corpus linguistics.

Computer technologies and linguistic corpora transform our view of how language is used. They also change analytical techniques of linguistic research. So, perhaps the most important is the question of the technological and linguistic future of corpus linguistics. According to the contributors, corpora can contribute to practical research in multiple natural language processing applications, such as machine translation systems or ontologies.

The final three questions address various topics of corpus research, including types of existing corpora, techniques of data annotation, comparability of corpora, use of statistics in data analysis, public availability of corpora, and the level of technical expertise required for creating and using corpora.

Each chapter is comprised of an interview and an essay, and the variety of responses shows the diversity of approaches as well as the gains and losses of corpus linguistics. This book is a timely publication. The rapid growth of the field in the past decades, and the research ambitions and the variety of approaches presented in the book, reflect the need for clarification of the core concepts and research approaches in corpus linguistics.

Reviewed by Dennis Ryan, University Writing and Language Consultants

This book originates from workshop papers on language development delivered by former students and colleagues to honor Jurgen M. Meisel, Professor of French, Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of Hamburg. Meisel has spent his career focusing on language development, revealing important similarities and crucial differences in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) acquisition, including that the processes are fundamentally different. Meisel has also demonstrated empirically that bilinguals from birth learn languages in basically the same way as monolinguals.

In keeping with Meisel’s research, articles in Part 1 examine similarities and differences in L1- and L2 acquisition. For example, Suzanne Schlyter, in ‘Tense and aspect in early French development’ (47–74), concludes that early-age learners of French between 3–5 and seven years ‘having Swedish as a first or concomitant language’ (47) show clear language-learning differences from bilinguals. They surprisingly use more tense forms than child bilinguals and refer to the distant past in passé composé (the past-perfect tense), which child bilinguals do not.

In Part 2, ‘The acquisition of sentence structure and functional categories’, Tom Roeper argues for ‘strict interfaces where semantics, pragmatics and syntax must coincide’ (205), but he also asks how interfaces are to be represented. Roeper concludes that ‘greater … innateness of grammar is entailed by this vision of interfaces … non-linguistic abilities [being] biologically bundled with the UG in a way that requires species-specific innateness’ (226), thus conceptually enlarging our understanding of ‘interface’.

Part 3, ‘Autonomous development vs. crosslinguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition’, is indebted to Meisel’s pioneering work in child bilingualism. Cristina Maria Moreira Flores and Andréia Schurt Rauber in ‘Perception of German vowels by bilingual Portuguese-German returnees’ (287–305) use a categorical discrimination test, the results of which show that bilingual Portuguese children, aged 5–10 years, who have returned to Portugal from Germany and never used German again, still have the ability to clearly discriminate German vowel contrasts.

Part 4, ‘Language acquisition, language contact and diachronic change’, is the subject of one of Meisel’s research projects. Language change does not happen often, and Meisel believes multilingualism and language contact represent ‘likely scenario[s] for … change’ (9–10). In this context, in ‘Acquisition in the context of language change, the case of Brazilian Portuguese null subjects’ (309–30), Mary Aizawa Kato discusses the ‘selective loss of null subjects’ (309), when Brazilian children do not acquire null forms when learning the language, but only later during schooling.

Meisel has impacted the personal and professional lives of a large number of colleagues and students, and they in turn have produced significant work, as evidenced in this book. Of concern, however, at least to this reviewer, is the ongoing reliance of generativists on Minimalist glosses (e.g. ‘fix the value of a parameter not instantiated in the L1’), that even as a shorthand that expedites discussion and ongoing research simultaneously suggests a club atmosphere that limits its membership by excluding scholars who do not speak the language.

Reviewed by Thomas Hoffmann, University of Osnabrück

Television is one of the most important mass media sources of our time and, as Kay Richardson points out, many shows make heavy use of dramatic dialogue. In this book, she takes a sociolinguistic approach to investigate the ‘onscreen/on-mike talk delivered by characters as part of dramatic storytelling in a range of fictional and nonfictional TV genres’ (3).

Following an introduction (3–20), in which R outlines the scope of her study and discusses central issues such as what counts as television dramatic dialogue and why this is an interesting subject of study, Ch. 2 (21–41) gives an overview of previous related research. Here R identifies two major strands of research, one focusing on dialogue from the perspective of television drama studies, the other being more linguistic in nature, looking at dialogue as language in use from stylistic and sociolinguistic points of view.

Ch. 3, ‘What is TV dialogue like?’ (42–62), compares the characteristics of television dialogue with other types of (non-)mediated and (non-)representational talk. While R shows that television dramatic dialogue is, of course, closer to feature film dialogue than authentic, ‘realistic’ face-to-face conversation, she also points out significant similarities with the latter (e.g. ‘the goal of mediating social relationships in […] interactive situations’; 62).

The following three chapters focus on different perspectives on television dialogue, starting with Ch. 4, ‘What TV screenwriters know about dialogue’ (63–84). In this chapter, R takes a closer look at the production of television shows and how it constrains the writing process. In addition, she explores what is considered ‘good’ dialogue from the screenwriters’ point of view. In contrast, Ch. 5, ‘What the audience knows about dialogue’ (85–104), investigates the role that dialogue plays for critics, fans, ordinary viewers, and aspiring writers. Ch. 6, ‘Dialogue as social interaction’ (105–26), adopts an interactional sociolinguistic approach and analyzes television dialogue from the perspective of communication ethnography.

The creation of characters through dialogue is explored through the lens of schema theory in Ch. 7, ‘Dialogue, character, and social cognition’ (127–50). In the following chapter, ‘Dialogue and dramatic meaning: Life on Mars’ (151–68), looks at how dialogue contributes to the meaning of a dramatic work, based on a case study of the British series Life on Mars. Ch. 9, ‘House and snark’ (169–87), examines the strategies of impoliteness in the American television show House. Finally, Ch. 10 (187–97) concludes the book with an overview of the topics discussed as well as suggestions for potential future research avenues.

Television dramatic dialogue is a fascinating read that draws on a wide variety of television shows from 24 and CSI: Crime scene investigation to Coronation street and Desperate housewives to Doctor Who and House, to name but a few. This book should be particularly interesting to researchers with a background in the sociology of language, but it should also appeal to any linguist working on language in use.

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

Finally, there is available an introductory textbook in English for learning Classical Nahuatl that is at the same time quite extensive in its coverage of the grammar of the language. This is a translation of the author’s original French edition. There has also been in recent years a Spanish translation.

Nahuatl has been described in numerous grammars over the centuries, beginning shortly after the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the early sixteenth century. Classical Nahuatl refers to the language of texts written down in the Roman alphabet in the years following the conquest. The grammars of this period attempted with varying degrees of success to describe this language in its full complexity. Before the publication of this textbook, there have been a number of good descriptions of Classical Nahuatl available in English, but for various reasons these works have not been adequate for beginning students of the language. These other works, and in particular J. Richard Andrew’s massive grammar of the language (Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, revised edition, 2003), are invaluable for more advanced study and reference.

This text begins with a short preface and notes on how to use the book. The ‘Preliminary lesson’ and the subsequent thirty-five lessons are grouped into two parts. Part 1 (3–156) contains the preliminary lesson, ‘Phonetics and writing’, and Lessons 1–15. These first fifteen lessons present the basic nominal, pronominal, and verbal morphology as well as basic syntax. There are exercises for each lesson. With the exception of the preliminary lesson, the exercises in each lesson, preceded by a list of new vocabulary, consist of sentences to be translated from and into Nahuatl. At the end of Part 1 there are review exercises (151–56).

Part 2 (159–379) consists of Lessons 16–35. This part covers the extensive derivational processes and treats the syntax in a much more detailed fashion than in the first part. There are four appendices (379–428). Appendix 1, ‘Traditional orthography’, summarizes the conventions used in the older documents, as these differ from the normalized orthography used in the textbook. Appendix 2 (by the translator, Christopher Mackay) summarizes the inflectional patterns of the language. Appendix 3 discusses the Aztec calendar, and the final appendix is a key to the exercises. Also included are Nahuatl–English and English–Nahuatl vocabularies and a detailed index. The orthography used in the book attempts to adhere closely to the traditional Spanish-based orthography but at the same time indicate consistently vowel length and glottal stops, something which the older texts and grammar often fail to do.

This is an excellent textbook for learning Classical Nahuatl, either in a classroom setting or by individuals studying on their own. The only linguistics knowledge required is a familiarity with basic grammatical terminology. This text is certain to become and remain the standard pedagogical manual for Classical Nahuatl in English for many years.

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

Vaeakau-Taumako (V-T), also commonly cited as Pileni in the literature, is an outlier Polynesian language spoken in the eastern Solomon Islands by somewhat fewer than 1,700 people spread over two small low-lying island chains. Although V-T is the principal everyday language of its speakers and is still being learned by children, it is considered an endangered language due to the small number of speakers and the increasing role of English and Solomon Islands Pijin, the national lingua franca of the Solomon Islands.

V-T is interesting as a Polynesian language for several reasons. Unusual for Polynesian languages, V-T has developed voiced oral stops as well as aspirated nasal stops and an aspirated liquid, contrasting with the more typologically usual non-aspirated nasals and liquid. The labial and dental oral stops display a three-way contrast: unvoiced unaspirated, unvoiced aspirated, and voiced. The velar oral stops have only a two-way contrast: unvoiced versus voiced. V-T has the largest consonant inventory of the Polynesian group, with nineteen consonant phonemes and comparatively numerous word-initial clusters. There are the five basic vowels /i, e, a, o, u/, but there is a restricted contrast for vowel length. The subject-verb-object basic word order of V-T is rare among Polynesian languages.

This grammar is organized into eighteen chapters, covering all aspects of the language, from historical and social setting and stylistic and dialect variation, through phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse structure. The geographical, social, and historical setting of the language is described in some detail in Ch. 1., and phonology and orthographic representation are discussed in Ch. 2. Ch. 3, ‘Word classes’, is a helpful overview of the open and closed classes, with a discussion of the difficulty distinguishing such categories. Reduplication is the topic of Ch. 4.

Ch. 5, ‘Deictics’, includes personal and possessive pronouns, demonstratives, deictic adverbs, and directionals. The next two chapters deal with nominal morphology and noun phrases. Chs. 8 and 9 discuss verbs and verb phrases. Ch. 10 is devoted to prepositions, and Ch.11 covers modifiers. Ch. 12 treats tense, aspect, and mood. Chs. 13–17 cover the following topics, respectively: simple clauses, complex clauses, serial verbs and related constructions, negations and questions, and coordination and conjunctions. Discourse organization is the focus of Ch. 18. Most chapters begin with a short introduction, which discusses definitional and descriptive issues of the topic of the chapter.

There are two appendices. Appendix 1 (461–99) contains four texts, glossed and translated, with one text each from the three main dialect areas and one from a rather isolated small community. Appendix 2 (500–02) is a list of grammatical morphemes, with the function and chapter reference for each. A wide-ranging bibliography and index conclude the book.

This grammar is written in a comprehensible and easily accessible language employing the descriptive and analytic resources of basic linguistic theory. This work is a valuable contribution to Austronesian and Polynesian linguistics, with much to offer not only to specialists in these areas but also to typologists and others interested in the peoples and cultures of the Pacific.

Reviewed by Dustin De Felice, University of South Florida

This book is comprised of eighteen chapters on teaching many of the domains within linguistics. Following an introductory chapter by Koenraad Kuiper (Ch. 1), each author discusses his or her personal approach to any of these topics: teaching, creating didactic activities, and/or crafting syllabi, among other classroom issues.

In Ch. 2, Jen Hay outlines a number of demonstrations for teaching introductory phonetics, and in Ch. 3 Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy discusses how learning phonology can contribute to a greater understanding of how theories are improved. Additionally, Laurie Bauer (Ch. 4) covers teaching morphology, and Sandra Chung (Ch. 5) details the challenges and opportunities in teaching syntax, especially in developing a teaching style that allows the students to discover syntactic argumentation on their own.

Within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics, Barbara H. Partee (Ch. 6) provides a glimpse into her formal semantics teaching career and talks about the various challenges she overcame, while Christopher Potts (Ch. 7) gives a tour of his approach to pragmatics, starting with syllabus development and ending with examples for final course activities. In Ch. 8, Harold Koch gives a memoir on his experience teaching historical linguistics, covering issues like order of topics, use of exercises, varieties of courses, and issues in professional development. In Ch. 9, Miriam Meyerhoff explores her experiences with teaching sociolinguistics to a wide variety of audiences.

In Ch. 10, Paul Warren presents his personal view for teaching psycholinguistics and explores production and comprehension, while in Ch. 11, Diana Van Lancker Sidtis handles the teaching of nonliteral language with a focus on formulaic expressions and language. She presents numerous examples from within her classroom. In Ch. 12, Susan Foster-Cohen handles the teaching of language acquisition through a discussion on finding a balance between linguistic knowledge and other child developments.

For more applied and practical linguistics, David Mendelsohn (Ch. 13) explores the value in studying linguistics for ESL/EFL classroom practitioners and provides specific examples of linguistic knowledge benefitting the classroom teacher. In Ch. 14, Alison Wray offers four games for working through language origins and change. She provides the procedures for each game and includes the necessary components in the appendix. In Ch. 15, Koenraad Kuiper covers some issues, challenges, and experiences with teaching LING101, and Janet Holmes (Ch. 16) discusses postgraduate research, providing suggestions for good postgraduate supervision. In Ch. 17, Wes Collins looks at the field methods course and its importance in linking linguistic knowledge with ethnographic context. Lastly, Kate Burridge (Ch. 18) concludes the book with a discussion on metaphors and their importance to thinking.

This book is an incredible journey through the experiences of accomplished educators who share not only their insights but, in many cases, their actual classroom activities. An added benefit comes at the end of each chapter where the authors provide autobiographical information that further illuminates their perspectives and teaching priorities. This book is a unique text that offers educators the opportunity to reflect on their practices through the experience of seasoned professionals.