Reviewed by Michael Cahill, SIL International

This book represents a popular look at translation, written by David Bellos, who is a professional translator and teacher. A recurring theme is the difficulty in defining translation. Obviously, consistency of meaning must be maintained, but attempts at specific definition of translation lead to complications, such as whether good translation involves maintaining sound symbolism, poetic form, humor, and impact.

In Ch. 7, B tackles meaning, which is not universally connected to language (i.e. the smell of coffee is meaningful), and which is highly context-dependent. The translator must know the context of what he is translating. Ch. 8 speaks of the mismatch between individual words across languages and addresses the idea that translation is just substituting one word for another. ‘Salt’ is not merely NaCl, but has a host of meanings, which do not match across languages. B notes the possibility of using distinctive features to distinguish meanings but shows that doing so bogs down the translation process.

B addresses the myth that culture has a determinative effect on language (e.g. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). Another thorny issue is how literal translations should be. B asserts that strictly literal translations do not exist and that ‘few commentators on translation have ever come out in favor of a literal or word-for-word style’ (103). Ch. 11 gives a fascinating historical account of translation practice during the time of the Ottoman Empire. B describes an instance when Sultan Murad II wrote in Turkish to Queen Elizabeth regarding her ‘having demonstrated her subservience and devotion and declared her servitude and attachment’ to him, which was translated for her in many fewer words into Italian.

In Ch. 15, B introduces the useful UP/DOWN terminology. Translation UP is toward a language of greater prestige than the source; DOWN refers to translation into a language with lower prestige. UP translations are more thoroughly adapted to the prestige language, while DOWN translations retain more traces of the source language. In Bible translation into minority languages, one would expect DOWN translation, but this does not happen. B notes the influence of Eugene Nida, who insisted that spiritual truth be accessible in all languages and respected local cultures. Nida-influenced translations tend to use the more adaptive UP approach.

Chs. 20–21 discuss legalities and human rights. Laws are inherently challenges to translate, because ‘legalese’ uses terms in ways that do not reflect normal usage. The result is the rise of ‘lawyer-linguists’ who are legally trained but also are translators. B gives an intriguing look at how this applies in the European Union. B also includes interesting discussion of simultaneous interpretation (originating in the Nuremberg trials), dictionaries, machine translation, and more briefly, humor, style, and literary texts.

B’s audience is not professional translators and linguists but rather the general public. B deserves credit for his accessible style, entertaining examples, and breadth of topics covered. The layman will find a much less mechanical view of what translation is and a debunking of some popular ideas.

Reviewed by Adam C. McCollum, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library

The book under review is the third incarnation, now in English, of a series of chapters in Dutch, introducing basic concepts of linguistics going back to 1992 and revised a decade later. Authors of various chapters changed between 1992 and 2002, and in this version are listed only in a table in the preface. The editors have in mind as their readers ‘first of all students of language, but it is also suitable for others who want to know more about modern linguistics’ (xvii). The chapters comprise six distinct parts, shifting in focus from the general to sentence-level to smaller-level topics, ending with chapters covering questions of language change, variation, and interaction: Part 1, ‘Language and language faculty’ (Chs. 1–3), Part 2, ‘Language and interaction’ (Chs. 4–5), Part 3, ‘Sentences and their meaning’ (Chs. 6–10), Part 4, ‘Words and their meaning’ (Chs. 11–13), Part 5, ‘Speech sounds’ (Chs. 14–16), and Part 6, ‘Languages and communities’ (Chs. 17–20). Each chapter consists of an introduction, including examples that highlight the linguistic topic under discussion, a number of sections covering the aspects of the topic, and a summary concluding the chapter. Each summary is followed by two additional sections: ‘Assignments’ and ‘Test yourself’. References and suggestions for further reading appear at the end of each chapter. Throughout the book, key terms are in bold-faced type. The book is written entirely from the point of view of British English.

This textbook will provide students with a broad initiation into most of the categories of modern linguistics, although a section solely devoted to writing systems, presently discussed only incidentally, would have been welcome. It is doubtful that any first-time linguistics student will finish reading this book without a greater appreciation for the wonder and complexity of the world’s languages present and past, though the latter might have been exemplified more. Some deficiencies deserve mention, including several typos found in the book. Additionally, in the transliterations of examples from various languages, ‘j’ is [j] (i.e. English ‘y’); for example, Samoyedic is spelled with a ‘j’ (348). This fact ought to have been clearly stated, or the practice to have been avoided, especially for English speakers. A glaring error of fact occurs in reference to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (1755) as ‘one of the first dictionaries’ (227), which ignores the centuries older lexicographical traditions of, for example, the classical and some Near Eastern languages, as well as European vernacular lexicography from the sixteenth century onward. Additionally, there is mention of the Swadesh list (237) but with no indication of some linguists’ criticism of methods associated with it. On page 292, ‘many web sites [sic]’ are referred to for the sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), but none are suggested at the end of the chapter. Finally, an almost naïve Western-centric point of view is palpable in some remarks (e.g. once each on pages 352, 353). Despite these caveats, I expect the book to succeed reasonably well as a first-level meeting between beginning students and linguistics.

Reviewed by Ferit Kılıçkaya, Middle East Technical University

For language teachers, designing and developing materials is one of the most crucial and challenging elements of language curriculum. The process involves taking into consideration students’ needs and the specific teaching context, as well as nationwide goals. With this book, including sixteen chapters and an introduction by the editors, the authors aim to provide insights into materials design and development from a variety of perspectives.

In Ch. 1, the author discusses designing language teaching materials in various stages, such as planning, implementation, and evaluation, highlighting the diverse views of the different stakeholders in various contexts. In Ch. 2, two general principles are discussed in detail, focusing on English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) content and material organization: one is the 80/20 rule, and the other is the Gestalt principle of similarity. Ch. 3 deals with the importance of the use of visual aids in English language teaching (ELT) material, providing hands-on suggestions and pedagogical considerations. Ch. 4 reports on how a corpus linguistics course can help English-major undergraduates with the use of worksheets that are created based on the corpus data.

Ch. 5 provides a discussion of materials design for teaching adults, based on principles, practices, and implications for adult learners, and presents exemplary materials. Ch. 6 introduces and justifies the use of literary texts in communicative language classes. In Ch. 7, materials design is discussed with respect to young learners, considering their cognitive development and the choice of topics and tasks. Ch. 8 sets content-based instruction at the very heart of materials design and adaptation by elaborating on its features.

Ch. 9 discusses the recent development in English use around the word, with a special focus on the relationship between its use as an international lingua franca and materials development. Ch. 10 addresses materials design from a view of English for specific purposes (ESP), discussing approaches and principles that play a role in ESP writing.   In Ch. 11, a school-based curriculum in India is discussed, highlighting the importance of the use of self-access materials to enhance learners’ autonomy in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. Ch. 12 deals with three vocabulary learning approaches using corpus-oriented language materials: studying with a textbook providing high- frequency words, a blended approach using word quests, and self-directed or independent learning.

In Ch. 13, materials design for adult English language learners is evaluated with respect to task-based language teaching. Ch. 14 looks at task-based materials design from a sociolinguistic perspective and highlights issues such as identity construction through well-designed tasks. In Ch. 15, how culture can impact ELT materials is discussed using exemplary tasks and materials. The final chapter examines pre-service language teachers and the role of information and communication technology in materials design, with specific reference to the use of e-portfolio.

Overall, this is an invaluable resource book for graduate students, teachers, and teacher-educators on various aspects of materials design and development. However, the inclusion of a concluding section addressing future directions in materials design and development would have been a valuable addition to the book.

Reviewed by Michael W Morgan, IGNOU, New Delhi

This book, arising out of the Third International Symposium on Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (Tomsk, 2006), deals with a wide variety of subordinate and/or coordinate constructions in a wide variety of North Asian languages. Bernard Comrie’s introduction lays out a typology of complex sentence patterns, focusing on instances where the distinction between subordination and coordination is fuzzy, and taking his illustrations from a distinctly non–North-Asian language, Haruai (Papuan).

Nearly the full range of genetic families found in North Asia is represented in this book. Altaic is represented by (i) Tungusic Udeghe, confusingly also referred to in the running head as Udihe (Maria Tolskaya and Inna Tolskaya, ); (ii) Turkic Kumyk, a European Turkic language analogous to North Asian Turkic (Linda Humnick); and (iii) Korean, together with Russian and English (Elena Rudnitskaya and Elena Uryson). Uralic is represented by Eastern Khanty, with chapters by Andrei Filtchenko and by Olga Potanina, and by two Samoyedic languages, Northern Selkup (Riita-Liisa Valijärvi) and Forest Enets (Olesya Khanina and Andrey Shluinsky). The isolate Ainu is discussed by Anna Bugaeva, and the Yenesei Ostyak language Ket is discussed by Edward J. Vajda and by Marina Zinn. Eskimo-Aleut, represented within North Asia by Siberian Yupik, is dealt with in this book by Osahito Miyaoka‘s discussion of a non-Asian variety, Central Alaskan Yupik.

Two additional chapters cover languages falling outside the scope of the book’s title (but not the symposium generating the book). Sandra Birzer’s chapter deals with Russian, which, while not usually thought of as a North Asian language, has become a dominant (and dominating) language throughout all of Siberia, often to the detriment of many indigenous languages. Finally, Nina Dobrushina’s chapter is more broadly typological, and deals with a number of languages of Eastern Europe: Russian, Aghul, Estonian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Turkish.

As Edward Vajda notes in his foreword (vii–xi), the constructions discussed in this volume divide almost evenly between analytic patterns (used for both coordination and subordination, described in chapters on Ainu, Eastern Khanty, Kumyk, Forest Enets, Korean, and Udeghe), and synthetic patterns of suffixation (for subordination, in all remaining chapters). While there is a distinct focus on the range and use of morphosyntactic forms to express various coordinate and subordinate relations (including at times unexpected forms, like imperative forms discussed by Dobrushina or interrogatives by Tolskaya and Tolskaya), several chapters also bring semantics and pragmatics into the discussion. Filtchenko and Humnick each provide pragmatic motivation for the preference for finite versus non-finite forms to express subordinate adverbial clauses. Similarly, Rudnitskaya and Uryson propose a semantic rather than formal typology of coordination.

Several chapters (both on Eastern Khanty, that on Forest Enets, and Birzer’s chapter on Russian) include a diachronic perspective to explicate the synchronic patterns, with, for example, Khanina and Shluinsky proposing a strong Russian influence as motivating an increased preference for finite structures in Enets.

This book will be primarily of interest to syntacticians (and morphosyntacticians) and to linguists specializing in the languages of North Asia. Individual chapters will also be of interest to specialists in the individual languages.

Reviewed by Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, University of Warwick

Readers interested in human interaction analysis will find in this book a highly stimulating and varied sample of essays reporting on the latest advances in the field. The interactional settings included range from the more widely studied, such as family, classroom, and informal conversation, to musical and clinical events, gaming, and auctions. In addition to English, Japanese, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and American Sign Language are featured in the analyses. In spite of their diverse interactional environments, all essays effectively demonstrate the ‘cooperative semiosis’ (Charles Goodwin, Ch. 13) that characterizes multimodality. Goodwin’s own essay is based on the moving and compelling analysis of an aphasic man with a three-word vocabulary, and shows how human action cannot be understood from within any isolated semiotic modality, or even within the individual actor.

Elizabeth Keating and Chiho Sunakawa in Ch. 14 also illustrate how the distribution of meaning unfolds ‘across multiple modalities simultaneously and sequentially’ (203), especially in virtual environments. Space, whether virtual or not, looms large in this collection. Mapping the topographics of intercorporeality reveals the patterns and rituals of, for example, family routines (Eve Tulbert and Marjorie H. Goodwin, Ch. 6). The subtle choreographic aspect of human interaction is visible even in its most basic, perhaps fundamental, genre, that of the informal conversation (Shimako Iwasaki, Ch. 8), regardless of the language under examination. The expressivity of performance reaches new heights in musical events, where sound, bodies, instruments, and space, among others, synchronize in the materiality of orchestration. In the final chapter, John B. Haviland provocatively concludes his essay on the analysis of musical spaces of interaction with this musing: ‘One wonders how different our view of the world, text, discourse, and conversation might have been had we started not with disembodied wiretaps of telephone conversations but with the richness of a procession of Zinacantec musicians, a string quartet rehearsal, or a jazz jam session’ (304).

This is a pertinent question indeed, addressed not only to interaction analysts, but to all involved in language and communication analysis. How much longer can we ignore the quintessentially embodied nature of most, if not all, of human communication? The discovery of ‘emotions’, another field of multidisciplinary scholarship, is fairly recent. Having left the body behind, as it were, as inessential to a holistic understanding of human communication, for decades we proceeded to analyze language as if affect were tangential or irrelevant. Embodied analyses, such as those in this book, remind us of the integrity of the human interactant as a situated, sensual actor, participating in his or her environment and in the lives of other animate or inanimate entities through a range of modalities, of which language is one, and not always the critical one.

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas

In sharp contrast with most previous treatments of the topic that focus on lexical peculiarities of Indian English and other second-language varieties of English, Marco Schilk looks at structural nativization at the lexis-grammar interface. The objective is eminently fact-finding and exploratory. S’s approach is based on a detailed comparison of the Indian and the British components of the International Corpus of English and also the 100-million-word web-derived corpus of acrolectal Indian newspaper English, viewed against its British counterpart.

The book is presented in nine chapters. Following an introductory first chapter, Chs. 2 and 3 explore aspects of structural nativization and of lexicogrammar, and Ch. 4 spells out the methodology of corpus linguistics. Chs. 5, 6, and 7 deal with three ditransitive verbs, give, send, and offer, and subject them to thorough scrutiny. The three verbs, though all ditransitive, are graded according to their degree of ditransitivity:  give is characterized as prototypically ditransitive, send less so, and offer is ranked as ‘low-frequency’. Ch. 8 is comprised of an evaluation and discussion of this topic, and Ch. 9 wraps up the book’s material on the whole and suggests some prospects for future research.

S begins the book by reviewing the history of the English language in India in its early (1579–1834) phase and its more robust (1835–1947) phase, dominated by the British Raj. The year 1579 is when Thomas Stephens, an English missionary, arrived in India, and the year 1835 marks the approval of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute on Indian education by the British parliament, which formally introduced English into India, its coveted ‘jewel in the crown’. He traces the fortunes of English in India though the Orientalist-Anglist controversy of the 1780s through the 1840s and in post-independence India, when the country considered replacing English with Hindi after a transitional period. He also briefly weighs in on different models of conceptualizing World Englishes.

S discusses structural nativization, which he nicely sums up as a transition from ‘English in India’ to ‘Indian English’ (5) with its own ‘characteristic features, which in turn may be [viewed as] endonormatively stabilized and institutionalized’ (16). In raising the issue of lexicogrammar, S has recourse to the writings of British linguists like J.R. Firth, M.A.K. Halliday, and John McHardy Sinclair in addition to work in phraseology by Russian linguists, especially from the Soviet days.

S establishes his thesis of progressive nativization of Indian English along two levels of analysis, namely collocational profiles and verb-complementational profiles of ditransitive verbs. He argues that English-language Indian newspapers, such as the Times of India, play a key role in propagating ‘the multiplying effect of the nativization of Indian English’ (172).

In the final chapter of the book, S underscores the importance of corpus-based research and the need for amassing even larger corpora to broaden the scope of research.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, University of Nizwa

This monograph contains fourteen chapters and covers four main topics relating to the construction and performance of gender identity through conversation. The first topic concerns the use of gendered terms to refer to the self and other. Even the gender-neutral pronoun ‘I’ is shown to convey gendered identity in some contexts. Gender may also be relevant to how speakers use terms of reference to categorize themselves as belonging to a social group, and in conversational storytelling.

The second topic addressed in this book covers aspects of conversational practices, such as repair moves and ways in which speakers orient their speech toward their interlocutors (termed here ‘recipient design’). The author of the first contribution examines how speakers initiate repair moves to remedy the perceived inappropriate categorization of a person during conversation through the use of the terms ‘girl’, ‘lady’, or ‘woman’. In the following contribution, the adaptation of pre-fabricated talk to the gender of the interlocutor in the context of calls to a help-line is examined. The author discusses clues provided to the advice-provider, which indicate the caller’s gender and subsequently trigger the appropriate gender-oriented pre-fabricated talk. The final contribution in this section concerns the use of question tags in conversational exchanges. The authors’ findings challenge an earlier understanding of the use of question tags as a symptom of relative powerlessness; rather, the authors posit that question tags are often employed as a strategy to induce the interlocutor toward a particular response or behavior. As a result, the authors provide an alternatively de-gendered perspective in contrast with an over-gendered analysis of the linguistic aspects of conversation.

The third topic covered in this book examines the role of gender in performing particular social actions, such as complimenting or joke-telling. The first contribution in this section investigates the function of reported compliments in the construction of the gendered self-identity of transsexual patients. Reported compliments that refer to gender-specific features of the receiver’s attributes are used to strengthen the speaker’s self-identification as a ‘real’ man or woman during telephone assessment sessions with a psychiatrist. The contribution that follows considers the role of gender in joke-telling in social settings. The author analyzes both speech and body language of the communicative event to determine how the joke-telling act can be identified as a male in-group event. The final chapter in this section considers how storytelling among family members may involve gendered features, which contribute to building intimacy between interlocutors.

The final section of the book concerns the construction of gender identities through membership categorization practices. One contribution examines children’s use of language to construct or evoke gendered identities, and another examines how assumptions of gender roles contribute to the construction of arguments during divorce mediation sessions.

All contributions contain excerpts from audio or video recordings of conversations to illustrate issues discussed, drawn from a broad range of social contexts and institutional settings (e.g. help-lines, everyday telephone conversations, children’s play activities, police-suspect interviews, psychiatric assessments, and mediation sessions). The book has a strong methodological component and will offer insight to postgraduate students and researchers about how a gender-related analysis of conversational interaction may be undertaken.

Reviewed by Peter Tunstall, Chicago

This collection offers a rich, multidisciplinary cross-section of current thinking on the notoriously elusive subject of consciousness, with a particular focus on conscious/non-conscious interactions.

Contributions are distributed among four sections: ‘Neuronal mechanisms’, ‘Psychological processes’, ‘Psychopathologies and therapies’, and ‘Expanding boundaries’. The first deals with brain chemistry and anatomy, connections, and synchronization; topics include gamma oscillations, general anesthesia, and the role of the endocannabinoid system in mediating the unconscious processes that underlie conscious moods. The second contains discussions of memory (implicit and explicit), social consciousness, lucid dreaming, and what magicians can teach us about attention and visual awareness. The third includes chapters on depression, dementia, schizophrenia, 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA) use, and the placebo effect, and the final part explores creativity, psi phenomena, and self-induced altered states of consciousness, such as those induced by meditation and the use of entheogens. The emphasis is toward the empirical rather than the philosophical strand of consciousness studies.

Two chapters deal explicitly with linguistic issues. In ‘Consciousness and language: A processing perspective’, Michael Sharwood Smith and John Truscott propose that ‘some linguistic processes are inherently unconscious while others can be conscious or not’ (129). Drawing on Bernard J. Baars’s global workspace model of consciousness and Ray Jackendoff’s intermediate-level theory, they contrast functions of the language module itself, which never reach activation levels sufficient for consciousness, with on extramodular linguistic knowledge, which includes conceptual representations (unconscious) and perceptual representations (conscious): ‘processing within the language module is entirely unconscious but nevertheless relies on conscious perceptual processes to provide its input and leaves conscious footprints in the form of the voice in the head’ (135). While much of this is plausible, one may question whether linguistic consciousness is wholly accounted for as a ‘set of perceptual blackboards, each representing the ultimate output of a sensory system’ (133). There is more to conscious thought than subvocalization.

In ‘Consciousness as the spin-off and schizophrenia as the price of language’, Timothy J. Crow attributes schizophrenia to developmental defects associated with hemispheric asymmetry. These defects, he proposes, lead to a kind of ‘aberrant transmission (backflow)’ (193) between the four quadrants of the cortex, resulting in pathologies of language and self-awareness. While the link between schizophrenia and lateralization abnormalities is supported by post-mortem studies (194), it seems something of a leap to identify the right hemisphere as the seat of reflexive consciousness. Because pre-psychotic children show language impairments (195), and schizophrenia is seen as an ‘illness of the self’ (197, quoting Maxim I. Stamenov), he concludes that language is crucial to a sense of self: ‘the components of language fall apart, and consciousness fragments’ (197). Some acknowledgement of non-psychotic aphasias would be in order here; how are we to account for the apparent persistence of self-awareness in these cases?

It is impossible to do justice in so small a space to the range of topics covered here and to the inventiveness of ideas displayed. While this book offers neither consensus nor closure on the nature of consciousness, it provides much food for thought.

Reviewed by Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, University of Warwick

Since having seen a draft of the first chapter of this book, I have been waiting for its publication with keen expectation. At the time of reading the draft, I was teaching intercultural communication to final-year undergraduate students and thought: ‘I could do with this textbook, and so could my students’. This is not just another textbook in intercultural communication. It is a personal and accessible invitation to consider some of the dimensions of the intercultural, with emphasis on communication but also with a sharp eye on the unresolved contradictions, the ideological subtexts, the political import, and the deeply human involvement and costs involved with interculturality.

From the outset, Ingrid Piller aims to establish a conversation with her readers, to entice and implicate them personally in her own journey of discovery as an international, travelling academic, a speaker of many languages, and an active member of multicultural networks. The author’s genealogy of intercultural communication (Ch. 2) is refreshingly informative and revealing. The historical perspective she offers facilitates the comprehension of certain enduring aspects of the field, some of which are less attractive than others, such as the prevailing ethnocentrism manifested in the dominance of Anglophone conceptualizations and United States-Eurocentric worldviews. The author does not spare balanced criticism of the key concepts of culture and nation, exposing the dangers of essentialisms and stereotyping (Chs. 4 and 5). The somewhat more technical treatment of linguistic and cultural relativity will be useful for readers who are unfamiliar with anthropology or linguistics, but who might be interested in a gentle introduction to some of the theoretical baggage in the field of intercultural communication (Ch. 4).

After offering the reader a select introduction to conceptual and academic resources, the author provides in the following chapters engaging illustrations of the intercultural-in-action: in the workplace, in advertising and commercial discourses, and in interpersonal relations (Chs. 6–8). A critical approach is in evidence in all chapters, but the last two are especially directed to answering some of the most disconcerting issues raised by the core question of this book: ‘how culture is made relevant by whom in which context for which purposes’ (128). This includes the racism and discrimination perpetrated under the guise of the language proficiency or cultural competence agendas (Ch. 9), and the practical and political consequences of language choice in multilingual environments or situations (Ch. 10). For progress to be made toward a non-essentialist, non-ethnocentric study and practice of intercultural communication, we need to better understand ourselves, as well as others (171). Looking at intercultural communication as a social practice, deeply embedded in the material and in its inequalities, is also mandatory (Ch. 10).

These reflections are a good starting point for any course in intercultural communication that embraces a critical perspective, and this is a suitable book to accompany such a course.

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas

This book is a revised version of an earlier printing originally published in Spanish. It is composed of eight chapters, divided into three parts. Part 1, ‘The model of controversy spaces’, contains a single chapter by the editor, following a six-page introduction, also by the editor, to the overall theme of the book. Part 2 contains two chapters under the rubric ‘Controversy spaces in the history of philosophy’. Part 3, ‘Controversy spaces in the history of science’, contains the remaining five chapters.

In his introduction, Oscar Nudler claims that there are three possible answers to the question of whether or not there can be progress in science: ‘the Scientific Method’ (1), the negation of any universal method, and the rejection of any regular pattern in the history of science. The first of these is not associated with anyone in particular, but the second and third are credited to Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, respectively.

In philosophy, Nudler tells us, the debate is not about how it progresses, but whether it does it at all. Once again, three positions are identified: one is optimistic, another is pessimistic, and a third holds that progress has to do with, not the solution, but rather the dissolution of problems by means of unending controversies.

However, Nudler adds in Ch. 1 that all of that changed in the second half of the twentieth century when the cognitive significance of controversies took center stage. Dating back to the Sophists, controversies are today studied under two opposing models: one, inspired by René Descartes and Francis Bacon, which views controversies as two-player games where the attitude toward dialectics is essentially negative and has the sole purpose of ‘interroga[ing] nature following the right method’ (10); and the other that, drawing its inspiration from Plato, views dialectics as ‘being superior in the hierarchy of knowledge’ (11).

Comprising Part 2, Ch. 2, by Francisco Naishtat reviews three controversies in historiography, and Ch. 3, by Diana Pérez, tracks the fortunes of the concept of supervenience in recent thought on the philosophy of mind. Part 3, which contains five chapters, by Olimpia Lombardi, Martin Labarca, Laura Benítez Grobet, Eleonora Cresto, and José María Gil, addresses themes as varied as the problem of irreversibility, the relation between chemistry and physics, Jacques Rohault’s system of natural philosophy, the notion of DNA in molecular biology, and the development of linguistic thought in the twentieth-century in the United States, respectively.

The contributors converge on the unifying idea of a ‘controversy space’, which is defined by Nudler as ‘a structure which usually has as elements, at any given point in time, some controversy which is central and other peripheral controversies related to it’ (18). This book is impressive in terms of both its scope and the number of different academic fields it surveys on its topic.