Reviewed by Gian Claudio Batic, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’

This volume focuses on the negation strategies and the conceptualization of negative categories in West African languages, with special attention paid to two geolinguistic areas: East Nigeria and the Gur and Mande regions.

The book is comprised of fifteen chapters, each discussing different aspects of and approaches for analyzing negation and its conceptualization. Preceded by an introductory section stating the main goals of the volume (1–6), the contributions cover the following languages and/or group(s) of languages, by chapter: 1. Hausa, Fulfulde, and Kanuri (Georg Ziegelmeyer, 7–20); 2.  Lamang and Hdi (H.Ekkehard Wolff, 21–56); 3. Hausa (Philip J. Jaggar, 57–70); 4. Kanuri (Norbert Cyffer, 71–92); 5. Songhay (Petr Zima, 93–106); 6. Jukun (Anne Storch, 107–20); 7. Igbo (Ozo-mekuri Ndimele, 121–28); 8. Santome (Tjerk Hagemeijer, 139–66); 9. Gur languages (Kerstin Winkelmann and Gudrun Miehe, 167–204); 10. West African languages (Klaus Beyer, 205–22); 11. Southern Mande (Valentin Vydrine, 223–60); 12. Northern Samo (Erwin Ebermann, 261–86); 13. Berber (Amina Mettouchi, 287–306); and 14. central African languages (Matthew S. Dryer, 307–62). Three useful indices complete the volume: a language index (363–64), a name index (365–66), and a subject index (367–68).

As stated in the introduction, ‘the main objective of this volume is to document negation patterns in individual languages or linguistic units’ (6). The underlying hypothesis is that the conceptualization of negative categories may have arisen through an area-oriented process as well as from individual languages. For this reason, language contact areas (and the results of such a contact) are given quite a number of analyses: among others, Georg Ziegelmeyer on Hausa, Fulfulde, and Kanuri (belonging to the Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan phyla, respectively) and Erwin Ebermann on North Samo (a Mande language belonging to the Niger-Congo phylum).

The sharing of common features in negation encoding seems to be a proof of the existence of contact-induced phenomena. A better understanding of negation systems in language contact areas can certainly promote further discussion on those topics that have been investigated for individual languages under no comparative and areal perspective. From this point of view, the article by Anne Storch provides an interesting analysis of the distribution of the copy pronoun in negative constructions in Jukunoid languages. The similarity between the intransitive copy pronoun as described for the Chadic Family (a feature thought to be genetically inherited Chadic), and the recapitulating pronoun as individuated in Benue-Congo suggests a borrowing of the feature and consequent areal spread. The book also gives space to articles of a more grammatical orientation: it is the case of Philip J. Jaggar’s contribution on the Hausa negative adverbial intensifier, which is almost neglected in previous grammars of Hausa (including, as admitted by the author, Philip J. Jaggar’s reference grammar).

Well-structured and clear in stating its main purposes, this book brings new insights into the study of negation system, offering at the same time a significant overview of negative categories in a certain number of selected languages. Scholars dealing with West African languages, either at the typological or areally-oriented level, will find in this book a rich set of informative and analytical tools.

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas

This book is the fifth volume of the Encyclopedia of language and education. The overall introduction by the series editor, Nancy Hornberger, is followed by an introduction to the volume by Jim Cummins, wherein he outlines the scope of the term ‘bilingual education’: the use of at least two languages of instruction somewhere along a student’s school career. He goes on to discuss some of the extreme negative reactions to it (with figures like former President Reagan and former House Speaker Gingrich joining the chorus) and how such impulsive reactions are belied by recent research.

The volume contains twenty-three chapters, presented under two sections: ‘21st century bilingual education: Advances in understanding and emerging issues’ and ‘Illustrative bilingual education programs and policies’. The latter presents case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Pacific Region and Australia, and South/Central America. The volume is rounded off with a subject index and a name index.

Section 1 contains a wealth of interesting and informative articles on key concepts in the area as well as their many ideological and sociopolitical resonances. There is also some effort to grapple with the identity issues that invariably crop up in bilingual education as well as issues related to differences in the lectal power of the different languages involved. Many authors are also concerned with questions relating to how the students and teachers involved in multilingual education programs face the challenge of straddling the linguistic and cultural interfaces they are called upon to inhabit.

The panoramic views presented by the authors in Section 2 illustrate the complexity as well as the diversity of realities in different parts of the world. While the situation in the continent of Africa is far from homogenous across the board, it is also the case, as Margaret Akinyi Obondo tells us, that ‘the colonial experience continues to influence and define postcolonial issues and practices’ (151). Ajit Mohanty affirms that in India education helped perpetuate, until more recently, the social and linguistic inequalities that date back centuries and were reiterated during different periods in the history of the country when Sanskrit, Persian, and English ruled the roost. Liming Yu suggests that bilingual education in China has much to do with the Westernization Movement willfully started in the second half of the nineteenth century as part of a move to ‘bring […] in techniques of capitalist production already operating in the west’ (175).

Writing about the situation in the United States, Teresa L. McCarty claims that ‘[bilingual education for Native peoples […] is no less fraught with controversy today than it was in the 1960s when indigenous educators such as Agnes Dodge Holm introduced the then-radical notion of schooling in the native language’ (239). Luis Enrique López and Inge Sichra trace the origins of bilingual education for the indigenous populations of Latin America to 1900s, with the natives themselves welcoming the move as counter-hegemonic.

This volume is well-balanced in its theoretical approach and inclusion of facts pertaining to each topic.

Reviewed by Ioana-Rucsandra Dascalu, University of Craiova

The four volumes of the History of thelLiterary cultures of East-Central Europe reflect the current tendency in sociohumanistic sciences to highlight countries of the communist bloc. The literatures of these countries originate in terror, suffering, and humility. The fourth volume, and the last in the series, structures the nineteenth and twentieth centuries according to several representative notions, including national poets, the image of family, female identity, the figure of the outlaw, sources of trauma, and examples of mediation.

In the preface, the editors define East-Central Europe as a compromise term, a buffer-zone between the German territories to the west and Russia to the east, an area including the Baltic countries, the South Slavic territories, and Albania (4). The creation of each of these peoples, their artistic expressivity outbursting from the wretched fatality of their destiny, is best characterized by the terms brilliance and tragedy (1).

The national poets in this volume were chosen because their literary contributions provide epic verse narratives as emblems of their nations (12).  . Poland’s national poet is Adam Mickiewicz, with his wish for political liberation and moral regeneration of the people. Sándor Petöfi is the Hungarian national poet, while Karel Hynek Mácha, the author of the Máj verse narrative, is the Czech national poet. France Prešeren is the Slovene national emancipation leader. Petar II Petrović Nejgoš, the ruler of Montenegro, used historic narrative in order to pacify his people. Hristo Botev, the Bulgarian national poet, remains an inseparable part of Bulgarian history, literature, and even geography (117). Mihai Eminescu is an important Romanian poet, and Hayyim Nahman Bialik is considered the most important Hebrew poet.

The chapter ‘Figurations of the family’ contains metaphors of a vision of the country as a close relative. Several subthemes are taken up, such as wife abuse and family violence in Estonian literature, representations of the motherland, the Party Father in Bulgarian literature, and the body of the Lithuanian nation.

Another chapter depicts the importance of women in the literary canon. In the succession of generations in Romanian literature, from Mihai Eminescu’s ‘muses’ to present-day authors, one finds an attempt at redemption by way of the woman’s lyrical voice. In Latvian literature, the editors include Aspazja and Anna Brigadere as examples. Another section focuses on women’s bodies in Croatian theatre and on the feminist dystopias of the Slovenian writer Berta Bojetu-Boeta.

The next section, ‘Figures of the other’, offers insight into the idea of tolerance towards the gypsies and also discusses the Vlad Tepes and Dracula myth in Romania. In the same vein, the editors sketch a figure of the outlaw (regionally known as haiduk) in East-Central Europe. In the twentieth century, the Holocaust, World War II, and totalitarian dictatorships (e.g. the Soviet gulags) caused trauma to manypopulations. . With the term ‘mediation’ the editors want to show international cooperation for stability and inter-ethnic relationships, involving bilingualism and cultural exchanges. The book’s epilogue accounts for the movement of liberation and emancipation of East-Central European literatures after the 1989 revolutions, including reintegration in the circuit of the free Western literature tradition.

Overall, the fourth volume in this collection is a work about writing literary history by integrating literature with political and social events of this region that is very rich in tradition and artistic imagery.

Reviewed by Katrin Hiietam, Manchester, United Kingdom

This book introduces the theoretical framework of dynamic syntax (DS). It is aimed at readers who are at an advanced undergraduate level to those who are professional linguists. The book further develops the framework presented in an article by Ruth Kempson et al. (‘On dialogue modelling, language processing, and linguistic knowledge’, 2001), which states that the knowledge of language comprises the ability to use a language in both speaking and understanding. In order to explain the structural properties of a language, one needs to define a formal model of how interpretation is built up from an utterance. This, according to the authors, is the syntax of a language. The DS approach can be called a modular framework, as every new piece of information connects to previous information and adds something to the context. The authors state that their stance enables a more accurate description of natural languages as it is ‘able to define processes of growth of information across sequences of expressions’ (x). They argue also that ‘natural language grammars, by definition, reflect the dynamics of real time processing in context’ (x).

In contrast to Kempson et al., this book aims to introduce the formal framework of DS to a wider audience and offer ample explanation of its premises; the authors also seek to apply this framework to a wide array of linguistic phenomena, including well-discussed examples from the English language, and, for contrast, examples from other languages. Some languages that pose problems for other theoretical approaches, such as Japanese, a verb-final language, or Bantu for its agreement systems, are analyzed. These languages are found to be as ‘natural as any other languages’ within the DS framework. The book offers several detailed linguistic analyses and illustrates how the novel approach gives old problems new answers. The authors claim that DS is a good starting point for modelling the interchange between speaking and understanding a language.

The content of each chapter is here summarized. Ch. 1 explains the problem around the gap between understanding and producing a language, as it is presented in other theories, and explains the proposed approach. Ch. 2 sketches the apparatus of the DS framework and discusses three linguistic problems: left dislocation structures, anaphora, and well-formedness and ungrammaticality. Ch. 3 deals with the relative clause construal, and Ch. 4 offers a relative clause typology. Ch. 5 discusses the right periphery, and Chs. 6 and 7 present an analysis of Japanese and Swahili agreement and conjunction, respectively. Ch. 8 offers an account of the English copula constructions, and Ch. 9 addresses the interface levels of a language: the correspondence between syntax and semantics, context and parsing, and context and well-formedness; it also looks at dialogue as an instance of production. The final chapter closes with a discussion of three areas that have proved problematic for theoretical linguistics: language acquisition, language change, and language evolution. For each of these areas, the DS model offers a solution by allowing for interaction between various components and mechanisms of language.

Reviewed by Susanne Wagner, Chemnitz University of Technology

In six chapters, Charles Boberg discusses some of the key issues involving the English language in Canada. The title of the book may come as a surprise to some readers, who might have expected to see ‘Canadian English’. This terminological shift is in fact one of the hallmarks of B’s book. When discussing varieties of English, many experts make a chronological—developmental—distinction between ‘English in X’ and ‘X-an English’, with the latter generally reflecting a more advanced, homogenized stage, while the former also allows for English as a second language (ESL) or even English as a foreign language (EFL) varieties (e.g. ‘English in China’ but not ‘Chinese English’).

In the Canadian context, however, this perceived step back has its origin elsewhere, namely in the increasing diversity of the English language in Canada, which to a certain extent mirrors changes in American English. We are thus dealing with the third stage in an evolution progressing from dialect mixing (‘English in Canada’)  to dialect levelling (‘Canadian English’, established through contact, spread, and westwards expansion),, and finally to dialect differentiation (‘English in Canada 2.0’, established through the development of new regional, ethnic, and social varieties).

There are other reasons that B prefers ‘English in Canada’ over ‘Canadian English’. First of all, B does not look at English exclusively, which would be impossible in the Canadian context. French and its status in relationship to English in different parts of the country not only plays a historical role, but also has once more come to the forefront of linguistic interest in recent years, primarily because of the language choices of immigrants. It is thus not surprising that B puts English into perspective in the very first chapter of the book; in Canada, English is ‘one of two languages’. The French-English perspective is complemented by the regional perspective, concerning dialects, as well as by the contrastive perspective, concerning North American English, and hinges on the ‘same but different’ concept when relating American English to Canadian varieties.

In over fifty pages, Ch. 2 provides a thorough overview of Canadian settlement history and patterns, making the chapter a good go-to reference for historical facts and their role in the foundation and establishment of Canadian English. Many tables, largely based on census data and earlier publications, help to illustrate the major stages.

Ch. 3 discusses three core areas of variation, namely vocabulary, phonology, and grammar, from a comparative perspective. American English is primarily used for comparison, and occasionally British English, focusing on traditional vocabulary choices. Grammatical (or rather morphosyntactic) differences are few, and on six pages, B only lists some tendencies that for the most part await more detailed analysis.

Based on B’s earlier work, Ch. 4 deals with vocabulary choices as well as ongoing changes in the lexicon. B’s North American Regional Vocabulary Survey (NARVS) project established bundles of lexical isoglosses that help clarify dialect boundaries within Canada. Ch. 5 gives an in-depth overview of current changes not only from the traditional regional perspective, but also with regard to social and ethnic variation.

In the final chapter of the book, B provides concise summaries of the previous chapters and addresses future directions, which are of particular interest and provide ample ground for future research on various levels.

Reviewed by Christopher R. Green, University of Maryland

Kirill Babaev’s offering brings to light an incredible degree of detail on Zialo, a Guinean Mande language that has been mentioned only fleetingly in earlier work. The author acknowledges that his work is not exhaustive insofar as it only minimally explores topics in phonology, morphology, semantics, or discourse. The main thrust of the book is to detail many of the complex syntactic structures of the language. B frames his observations on Zialo alongside other closely related Mande languages, thus speaking to the well-known goal of crosslinguistic, comparative, and classificatory research being carried out by him and his cadre of Russian contemporaries working throughout West Africa.

Ch. 1 of the book provides introductory remarks on the state of knowledge of Zialo and its close cousins, among them Mende, Bandi, Loko, Kpelle, and Looma. Chs. 2 and 3 delve into insightful cultural and sociolinguistic information about the Zialo people and their language use, respectively.

Ch. 4 begins the descriptive bulk of the book in its presentation of basic features of the Zialo’s phonetics and phonology. Addressing metrical foot structure and syllable structure. B discusses the presence of foot-like units in Zialo, which are similar to those described by other scholars in work on a number of other Mande languages, such as Bambara, Gouro, and Maninka. B also attends to the language’s consonant and vowel inventories, sound correspondences between Zialo and several of its relatives, and Proto-Southwestern Mande, as well as several tonological processes believed to be under way.

Ch. 5 covers a number of characteristics related to morphology, most provocative of which is the presence of suprasegmental morphemes that provide clues to the underlying tonal structure of an adjacent morpheme and the complex system of initial consonant alternations witnessed in certain constructions and phrases. Ch. 6 through Ch. 9 hold the syntax portion of the book, with individual chapters devoted to the nominal system, the pronominal system, the verbal system, and sentence-level syntax. Topics of particular interest include the exceptional behavior of loanwords into the language; the relationship between predicative person markers, personal pronouns, and bound person markers; and differing means of marking focus, topics, intensity, and emphasis.

The book closes with three appendices. Appendix 1 offers a 100-word Swadesh list comparing Zialo, French, and English. The second appendix provides several collected Zialo texts. The final appendix is a dictionary of Zialo to English and French that is quite extensive and well done for its size.

B’s book is a welcome contribution to ongoing efforts aimed at providing grounded and methodologically informed documentation of languages from the Mande subgroup of the Niger-Congo language family.

Reviewed by Mark J. Elson, University of Virginia

This book comprises eight chapters: ‘Thinking about morphology and morphological analysis’ (1–32), ‘Words and lexemes’ (33–72), ‘Morphology and phonology’ (73–108), ‘Derivation and the lexicon’ (109–35), ‘Derivation and semantics’ (136–56), ‘Inflection’ (157–95), ‘Morphology and syntax’ (196–225), and ‘Morphological productivity and the mental lexicon’ (226–57). The chapters are followed by a glossary, references, and an index. The authors note that their book, unlike others of its kind that emphasize theory, concentrates on description, analysis, and the fundamental issues that face all theories of morphology (viii).

A second, equally welcome, feature is the inclusion in each chapter of relevant data from Kujamaat Jóola, a Senegalese language, intended to exemplify the points made in the chapter and, by the end of the book, to have presented a more in-depth view of the morphology of a single language. The authors acknowledge that Kujamaat Jóola as an exemplar can be questioned on the grounds that its morphology is predominantly agglutinative and thus provides limited exposure to the less transparent phenomena of fusional morphologies, but they maintain that the introductory nature of the book justifies its choice (x). There will surely be widespread agreement with the consensus of comments included by the publisher that this book is a reader-friendly guide providing a good comprehensive introduction to morphological theory and practice, the latter by way of well-constructed exercises.

It should be noted that there are occasional data-related issues and inaccuracies or misleading statements. To name a few, Romanian verb forms appear without orthographically required diacritics (178), and the present indicative of umplea, cited as a representative of the second conjugation, appears with the stress pattern of the third (178). Spanish fue is third-person singular, not first-person singular (176); Italian orthography does indicate stress in verb forms, when it is final, thus, in the third-person singular preterit of regular verbs (89). Hebrew gender agreement of the verb with its subject is not limited to the present (199) but occurs in the past and future as well, although differing structurally from its manifestation in the present. The Russian past tense originally comprised a participle showing agreement, thus not an adjective in the usual sense of the term (199); syncretism does occur in the present indicative of the Romanian first conjugation, between the third-person singular and the third-person plural (178).

Of potentially greater pedagogical consequence is the absence of adequate discussion relating to the issue of the role of grammar (i.e. nonphonetic factors) in the distribution of allomorphs. Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Roman Jakobson, for whom the issue was of great importance, are mentioned in the preface, but their important contribution to our understanding of allomorphy is not mentioned, nor is either included in the list of references. Some may also question the authors’ initial presentation of morphemes. These units, they claim without citing precedent, are ‘often defined as the smallest linguistic pieces with a grammatical (emphasis mine) meaning’, but add that this definition is ‘not meant to include all morphemes’, that ‘a morpheme may consist of a word, such as hand, or a meaningful piece of a word, such as the -ed of looked…’ (2). If it was their goal, given this qualification, to impart the commonly held view that morphemes may have lexical meaning as well as grammatical, it is difficult to see pedagogical justification for proceeding from a definition that limits them to the latter.

Reviewed by Iván Ortega-Santos, University of Memphis

Ti Alkire and Carol Rosen’s introduction to the history of Romance languages focuses on five major languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Spanish, French, and Italian are discussed together in the first eight chapters, and Portuguese and Romanian are presented in separate chapters that follow (Ch. 9 and Ch. 10, respectively). Particular emphasis is put on the evolution of the sound system; Chs. 1–5 look at Spanish, French, and Italian. Emphasis is put also on morphological evolution: verb morphology in Chs. 6–7 and noun and adjective morphology in Ch. 8, for the same three languages. In Ch. 11, the authors look at the evolution of the lexicon in all five languages.

Ch. 1 (5–25) deals with the vowel system of Latin and its evolution in Spanish, French, and Italian. Chs. 2–4 (26–76) focus on the evolution of the consonant system (e.g. degemination in Spanish and French, lenition processes, or the birth of new consonants). Ch. 5 (77–94) further discusses the vowel system (e.g. vowel raising in Italian and yod effects in Spanish and French). The evolution of the present indicative and the rest of the tenses is discussed in Chs. 6 and 7 respectively. Ch. 8 (185–205) deals with the development of the nominal, adjectival, and pronominal system in these three languages. A discussion of Portuguese and Romanian, in Ch. 9 (209–51) and Ch. 10 (252–86), respectively, follow a similar approach. The lexicon is taken up in Ch. 11 (287–316), and particular attention is paid to word formation processes and loanwords. Additionally, in Ch. 12 (317–38), further attention is paid to the earliest Romance texts showing the emergence of the Romance vernaculars or dialect standardization.

Interspersed throughout the chapters are a number of carefully chosen topics that will be appealing to readers, including the birth and death of rules or how researchers gained an insight into Popular Latin. Syntax is briefly discussed with morphology when relevant; for instance, the birth of the definite article and the change from synthetic to periphrastic passive forms are presented.

Though some degree of familiarity with linguistic terms is certainly assumed, most technical words are explained in the body of the text or else in the glossary. In general, the discussion stands out as particularly clear, as is necessary for an introduction. The exercises contribute further to the usefulness of this book.

Some scholars will miss a more extensive discussion of the evolution of syntax in these languages. However, one should bear in mind that this is an introduction and that extensive attention has been paid to other matters. By necessity some aspects were omitted from the discussion (e.g. the birth of analytic comparative and superlative forms). The highly detailed use of references concerning the analyses and derivations discussed will prove useful not only to beginning students but also to more seasoned scholars. All in all, this book is an excellent pedagogical tool.

Reviewed by Reda A. H. Mahmoud, Minya University

This updated and revised sixth edition of Introduction to language and communication handles the fundamental concepts in linguistics on both structural and cognitive levels. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with the basic structural elements of linguistics, starting with morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and language change. Part 2 includes the cognitive-oriented sections on pragmatics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and language and the brain. These two main parts are the results of classroom experience and discussion, reflecting the authors’ intention for this book to be used in course design.

In eight chapters, Part 1 introduces and discusses the core areas of structural linguistics. Chs. 2–6 handle the discrete units for the traditional main fields (e.g. morphemes, phonemic and phonetic features, syntactic units, and word formation processes), the properties of these structural units, and the rules that characterize the combination and organization of these units. Chs. 7 and 8 focus on the ways that language varies across individual speakers and dialect groups, and how languages vary and relate to each other historically.

Part 2 departs from structural linguistics and turns to language use and acquisition, relying on the main concepts introduced in the first part. This part deals generally with language use and cognition, incorporating significant issues in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Ch. 9 explores the nature of pragmatics, its subareas, and the study of language use in relation to structure and context of use. Chs. 10–11 focus on the study of the acquisition and use of linguistic knowledge. Ch. 10 investigates the production and comprehension of speech and explains how linguistic knowledge is represented in the mind and how this information is put to use in communication. Ch. 11 is devoted to the acquisition of language, exploring the development of human language compared to other primates in order to understand the processes of learning and the complexity of communication systems. Finally, Ch. 12 approaches the study of the neural basis of language by exploring the experiences of patients who have problems with speech production and comprehension.

Every chapter in this book is supported by plentiful illustrative examples from English and other languages, study questions, exercises, and recommendation for further reading. The book also includes a valuable glossary of linguistic terms.

Reviewed by Gian Claudio Batic, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’

The contributions included in this book offer, with varying degrees of originality, a general picture of the complex relationship between English and Nigerian languages. The book is divided into eighteen chapters preceded by a foreword, written by Herbert Igboanusi, and a short introduction.

The article by Dele Adeyanju (1–13) focuses on the longstanding relationship of English with indigenous Nigerian languages. Sola Babatunde (14–29) discusses the issues of multilingualism, sustaining the need to improve bi- and multilingualism as a tool of regional development. I.E. Olaosun (30–39) sees English as a predatory entity and suggests that, to avoid the disappearance of indigenous languages, ‘the functional territories of the English Language should be cut down to consign pre-eminent roles to the indigenous languages in the country’ (31). R.A. Soyele (40–58) assesses language attitude in the use of Yoruba and English with regard to the legislature and media power domains in Ogun State.

C.B. Egwuogu (59–68) analyzes the role of English as a vehicle of globalization, highlighting the passive role of African languages in such a process. He proposes that local languages assume some of the functions reserved for ‘colonial languages’ (e.g. English and French). Mahfouz A. Adedimeji (69–87) conceives of globalization as a threatening process whose main targets are the developing nations. Affirming that ‘the US offers a good example for Nigeria in terms of protecting the linguistic rights of her citizens’ (81), Adedimaji argues that a lesson could be drawn from what he calls ‘the American paradigm’. Adeniyi Harrison and Bello O. R. (88–99) stress the importance of minority languages for the development of the country, concluding that the government should reach the people in the language they speak. Akinola A. Asiyanbola (99–113) analyzes the role of English in Nigerian universities. The following chapter by Oyinkan Medubi (114–28) focuses on the metaphorical nativization of terms of address in the context of English. The article by Ayoyinka O. Ogunsanya (129–56) deals with an interesting phenomenon: the emergence of English as a mother tongue among the elite children in Lagos. Fadaro J. Oludare (157–77) presents a study carried out in Osun State with the purpose of assessing the teaching of oral English at the secondary school level.

From a diachronic perspective, Adeyemi O. Babajide (178–90) analyzes epitaph writing in a few cities of Yoruba. Henry J. Hunjo (191–205) discusses President Yar’adua’s letter of campaign as a new kind of social tie between the writer (the former president) and the reader (the electorate). The employment of slang expression among university undergraduate student is addressed by Ayo Osisanwo (206–22). ‘Demola Jolayemi (223–37) adopts a sociophonetic approach to examining gbòzà, a word evolved in the lexical repertoire of Nigerians as a ‘societal response to the overbearing presence of the military in the Nigerian polity’ (235). Abolaji S. Mustapha’s article (238-51) deals with the status of Nigerian English as an English as a second language (ESL) variety. K.K. Olaniyan (252–75) analyzes conversational interactions in Chinua Achebe’s A man of the people. The contribution by Jide Balogun (276–84) uses Jamaica Kincaid’s A small place to investigate whether the colonizer in the West Indies should be identified with the White or the Black.

This volume presents an original collection of quality articles that deal mostly with the sociolinguistic situation of southern Nigeria. The general point of view stressed by the contributors is that indigenous languages should compete with English as tools for national development. The book is rich in suggestions and might offer insight for language planners and policy makers.