Reviewed by Maria Teresa Agozzino, The Ohio State University

With a title that intentionally evokes Joshua A. Fishman’s 1991 reversing language shift theory (RLS), Alasdair MacCaluim presents a thorough and realistic analysis and assessment of Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) language learning at the beginning of the new millennium. Although M is primarily concerned with the role of adult learners in RLS, he considers all speakers and his data are drawn from several media.

In the introduction and following three chapters, M lays out his methodology and discusses the sociolinguistic context of Gaelic language use and learning infrastructure: social status, identity, motivation, political and social impact, and language stigma and regeneration. M tackles such issues as the relationship between language, culture and nationalism, native speakers and learners, and the effects of migration. The remainder of the book presents the empirical data from which he draws his conclusions: surveys, appendices, and questionnaire results, followed by a brief conclusion and an impressive bibliography.

M clearly understands the enormity and complexities of the project and admirably identifies many nuances within the general picture. Distinctions and classification can all too often depend on subjective attitudes and expectations, thus such terms as ‘Gaelic learner’ have multiple senses, while the label of fluency may mask limitations in literacy, register, and context and ignore dialectal considerations. Furthermore, M points out that many of these phenomena are not exclusive to Gaelic and cites several parallels in the experiences of adult learners of Welsh. Neither insiders (fluent speaker) nor outsiders (non-speaker), learners have an ambiguous and transitional identity either in the middle or on the margins of the target speech community. While language acquisition can be a long process, linguistic competency does not ensure cultural acceptance, and in some cases adult learners will be less integrated than non-speakers, whose acceptance may be due to their personality and community service alone. Moreover, the nomenclature that has emerged to categorize Gaelic language learners can reinforce divisions. (Curiously absent from this study is the term ‘on-comer,’ commonly used on the Western Isles to describe non-Hebridean settlers.) A future study might map the influence of music sung in Gaelic in attracting learners.

In this book M presents a compelling scientific and social study that should be read by linguists, educators, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, politicians, Celtic studies scholars (particularly those of Scottish studies), and all native speakers and learners of the Gaelic Language.

Reviewed by Douglas C. Walker, University of Calgary

Questions of identity influenced by language and by linguistic behavior are of increasing importance in studies of linguistic ethnography and ecology. French lends itself particularly well to research in this domain, given the rich geographic, social, and stylistic variation it displays despite centuries of efforts at standardization and attempts to project a unified view of the language and the state. This rich volume surveys a range of the issues involved in the complex link between language and identity, demonstrating the necessity to speak of ‘identities’ rather than a homogeneous and all-encompassing affiliation.

Following an introduction by the editors, the book is organized into four parts. Part 1, ‘Institutionalized identity’, chronicles the linguistic history of the French language and the implications of standardization dating from the seventeenth century.

Part 2 ‘Regional identities’, contains three papers that examine the situation in the Picardy region of extreme north eastern France (and small zones in adjacent Belgium). The persistence of the Picard variety (or set of varieties), the development of its literary tradition, and its formal recognition as a language of France in 2001 all belie the normative and standardizing attitudes that are believed to characterize both French language policy and the elimination of dialects. Nonetheless, as the contributors make clear, the value and the vitality of this variety provoke different reactions in the various segments of the population, and its prognosis is not clear.

Part 3 moves to ‘Social identity’. The first contribution examines pronoun choice—specifically, the notoriously complicated tu/vous ‘you’ distinction. Using results from a recorded interview of six women friends, Penelope Gardner-Chloros shows how, using complicated strategies, speakers make pronoun choice to determine ‘with which groups and which individuals one wishes to be identified and from which, on the contrary, one wishes to differentiate oneself’ (107). Two subsequent papers explore the rich field of terms of address and insults using the categories of context, age, gender, status, and ethnicity, with results that confirm the importance of shared knowledge and the register involved as well as links to more general issues of politeness. Part 3 closes with papers that examine the use of the stigmatized expression quoi ‘what, which’ in the context of recent historical change and the use of the regionally marked forms of the numerals septante ‘seventy’ and nonante ‘ninety’, to explore the relationship between linguistic forms and identity.

The final component, Part 4, ‘Competing identities’, looks beyond the borders of metropolitan France to examine four different domains. David Cowling investigates French-Italian borrowing and codeswitching in the sixteenth century as seen through the eyes of Henri Estienne, who  asserted that the French language is superior to its rivals and must be protected from pernicious foreign influences. This is followed by discussions of the French spoken by the Huguenots in eighteenth-century Berlin and of the French variety spoken by Maghrebian immigrants to France who struggle with conflicting identities and with stereotypical categorization. Part 4 closes with a review by Albert Valdman of variation in Louisiana French and strategies for its revalorization and revitalization.

Finally, Françoise Gadet summarizes the complexities of correlating identity assignment with linguistic variation, particularly given the impact of the vernacular in relation to the standard language, the changing role of the written language, and the increasing influence of nonstandard usages. Of particular importance in the evolution of French and of francophone identities will be, according to Gadet, the language of the younger generations in a globalizing context.

The French language and questions of identity closes with a useful general bibliography and name and subject indexes. It is handsomely produced and, more importantly, contains a wealth of information that will be of interest not only to researchers of French but also to researchers of language and identity.

Reviewed by Andy Van Drom, Université Laval, Canada

Bringing together fifteen years of work on critical discourse analysis in nine chapters (six previously published), Theo van Leeuwen develops the concept that any discourse, however abstract, can be interpreted as recontextualized social practice.

Departing from the thesis that discourses are social cognitions that can be—and indeed are— used as resources for representing social practices in text, Ch. 1, ‘Discourse as the recontextualisation of social practice’ (3–22), lays out the theoretical foundation of the book, and identifies the ten elements that form the building blocks of any social practice. These elements are: (i) a set of actions performed in a sequence that is fixed to a greater or lesser degree; (ii) the performance modes that are the ‘stage directions’ for the different sequences; (iii) a set of participants in certain roles; (iv) the participants’ eligibility conditions; (v) the participants’ presentation styles; (vi) the time; (vii) the location; (viii) eligibility conditions for the location; (ix) resources, tools, and materials needed to perform a given practice; and (x) the resources’ eligibility conditions. The author explains how a recontextualization chain acts as a filter for these elements and leaves discursive traces that are explicit to a greater or lesser degree. This is said to be the result of the transformations (e.g. substitution, deletion, rearrangement, addition) that the recontextualization process inflicts on discourse. The remaining chapters provide examples and evidence for these claims.

Ch. 2, ‘Representing social actors’ (23–54), investigates how the participants in social practices can be represented in English discourse. The author examines how participant roles are allocated and develops a sociosemantic network that brings social representation (e.g. nomination, agency) together with linguistic realization (e.g. nominalization, passive agent deletion). Ch. 3, ‘Representing social action’ (55–74), originally written as a companion paper to Ch. 2, draws on examples from the same text to present a parallel sociosemantic analytical network that focuses on actions rather than actors.

In Ch. 4, ‘Time in discourse’ (75–87), the author describes the semiotic resources used for representing the timing of social practices. He maintains a clear distinction between location (i.e. the point in time) and extent (i.e. the duration of an action), and pays special attention to the way time of different practices is managed and synchronized. Ch. 5, ‘Space in discourse’ (88–104), investigates how space (including natural and constructed lay-out) is realized, focusing on the difference between objective and subjective space (the latter being related to the actor’s point of view).

Ch. 6, ‘The discursive construction of legitimation’ (105–23), and Ch. 7, ‘The discursive construction of purpose’ (124–35), deal with the additions that can result from the recontextualization  process—namely, legitimation and purpose, which are not inherent to social actions but rather are discursively constructed.

The last two chapters apply the social actor theory to the field of visual communication. Ch. 8, ‘The visual representation of social actors’ (136–48), looks at how people—and more specifically, ‘others’—are depicted in the Western media by measuring the social distance and relations that these images symbolize. Ch. 9, ‘Representing social actors with toys’ (149–62), which brings together the author’s expertise in critical discourse analysis and multimodal semiotics, continues the same line of inquiry by looking at toys (e.g. Playmobil) as a semiotic resource for representing social roles and identities in play. This final chapter, in which the author presents a fine application of the theoretical aspects developed in his earlier chapters, is the ultimate illustration of a framework that is explicit, methodical, and critically incisive.

Reviewed by Sharon Utakis, Bronx Community College, CUNY

Alexandra Georgakopoulou argues that narrative research should be broadened to include ‘snippets of talk that flouted expectations of the canon’ (vii), which she refers to as small stories, following work by Michael Bamberg. Small stories are not prototypical narratives but rather include tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared events, allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell.

In Ch. 1, ‘From narrative/text to small stories/practices’ (1–29), G contextualizes her studies within the narrative turn, with a focus on the work of William Labov and his critics. She neatly summarizes important issues that arise within narrative research and demonstrates the need to expand these ideas. In this chapter, G also describes her data, which derive from two sources:  an ethnographic study of audio-recordings of a group of female adolescents in a Greek town and a collection of e-mail messages from six Greek correspondents. Throughout the book G notes similarities between these data-sets but focuses primarily on the ethnographic study.

Although Ch. 2, ‘Beyond the narrative canon: Small stories in action’ (31–60), begins with discussion of prototypically Labovian narratives, it soon turns to other types of narrative. G argues that the stories in her corpora share ‘the ongoingness of their tellings’ (37). These stories have immediacy and both build and refer to links among participants’ previous and future interactions.

In Ch. 3, ‘Narrative structure in small stories’ (61–87), G discusses the need to expand the vocabulary of narrative analysis to include sequentially based and emergent narrative structures. She focuses on three types of small stories: breaking news, projections, and shared stories.

In Ch. 4, ‘Small stories and identities’ (89–117), G discusses links between roles of a story’s telling and larger social roles. Different participants contribute to stories in different ways, and G argues that ‘specific participants over a period of time tend to assume specific roles that perform specific actions in storytelling events’ (90).

Ch. 5, ‘Positioning of self and other in small stories’ (119–46), looks at how constructions of self can be dialogical and relational. In particular, G explores how recontextualizations of assessments are used as arguments in jointly constructed stories.

In the last chapter, ‘Conclusion: Small stories as the new narrative turn’ (147–54), G ties together the ideas she has developed, stating that her aim was to show the features of small stories and how these can be related to previous narrative research and to provide ‘an identity toolkit’ to show how stories can be related to participants’ construction of self and other.

Small stories, interaction and identities is occasionally repetitive and sometimes needs more explanation of the data.  However, on the whole, the book is a compelling argument for expanding the field of narrative research to include a greater range of narrative types and contexts.

Reviewed by Sarah Turner, University of Waterloo

In this ambitious book, Ian Press traces the development of Russian from its prehistory to the mid-twentieth century. The title notwithstanding, P’s primary concern is with written rather than spoken language. The book combines historical grammar, a sociolinguistic history, and forays into literary history and interpretation.

In the introduction (1–10), P summarizes earlier attempts to characterize the relationship between Church Slavonic and vernacular East Slavonic. He suggests that the linguistic situation of the early medieval period can be described as triglossic, with different varieties of language seen in ecclesiastical texts, historical writing, and legal texts. Ch. 1 (11–22) outlines the linguistic prehistory of East Slavonic and gives an overview of the origins and characteristics of East Slavonic literature.

In Ch. 2 (23–92), which opens with a history of Kievan Rus′, P lists early attested developments in the sound system, describes the major linguistic features of the ecclesiastical, business, and so-called worldly-literary languages, and discusses the status and interrelationship of these language varieties with particular reference to the work done in this area by H. G. Lunt. Ch. 3 (93–169) treats the political, linguistic, and cultural histories of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. Ch. 4 (170–232) provides an account of eighteenth-century debates about the normalization of Russian. Ch. 5 (233–72) outlines the language of the post-Puškinian period.

Chs. 2–5 include samples of texts ranging from the colophon of the eleventh-century Ostromir Gospel to popular fiction of the early twenty-first century. English translations and linguistic commentaries are provided for the extracts in Chs. 2 and 3. The six appendices (274–345) include examples of the Church Slavonic component of modern Russian, morphological tables with commentary based on Valentin Kiparsky (Russische historische Grammatik. Band II: Die Entwicklung des Formensystems. Heidelberg: Winter, 1967), and extracts from classic and more recent studies of the Russian language. The bibliography is divided into two sections, one on language (346–54) and the other on history, literature, and culture (355–62), although some works referred to in the text do not seem to be listed in either section.

By P’s own admission (240), some sections of this book would have benefited from more time to come to fruition. The book as a whole would have benefited from a clearer focus as well as from the attention of an editor. It is written in an informal style, often reminiscent of lecture notes, which compromises the clarity of the exposition and may prove confusing to newcomers to the subject. If these shortcomings could be overcome in a second edition, the book would be very useful to students of Russian linguistics because it draws on recent work not available in English and covers a wider time period than other books in the field.

Reviewed by David Stifter, Universität Wien, Austria

In this syntactic study of Finnish, Satu Helena Manninen explores a language that has rarely received attention in the generative tradition. In the introduction, M describes the purpose of her study: to investig­ate the syntactic function and behavior of manner ad­ver­bials—specifically, their forms, licensing, hierarchical and linear positions, and relation to other verb phrase adverbials. (Adverbials in subordinate clauses are not included in this inves­tig­ation.)

Finnish is an agglutinative language with a great quantity of inflectional and de­ri­v­ational morphology. As a consequence, adverbials—unlike adverbs—are realized as nouns, adjectives, numerals, nonfinite verbs, and prepositional and postpositional phrases. M aims to present a uniform analysis of ad­verbials of these different types.

In Ch. 2, ‘The minimalist framework and the structure of Finnish sentences’, M explains the theoretical foundations of her study and provides an account of the func­tional structures of Finnish sentences. In Ch. 3, ‘Adverbials and func­tio­nal categories’, she contrasts previous treatments of adverbials, including Richard Kayne’s antisymmetry the­ory (The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994) and minimalism as well as the feature based theories of Guglielmo Cinque (Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Artemis Alexiadou (Adverb placement: A case study in antisymmetric syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997), and Christopher Laenzlinger (Comparative studies in word order variation: Adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998).

In Ch. 4, ‘The structure of Finnish manner adverb­ials’, M demonstrates that Finnish adverbials, derived from nouns and adjectives, always inflect for lexical case. From distributional observations she concludes that even true adverbs (i.e. adverbs with exclusively adverbial affixes) are case-inflected, and thus, all adverbial subcategories can be uniformly analyzed as ‘kasus phrases’ (kPs) or as prepositional or postpositional phrases (PPs).

Ch. 5, ‘A theory of layered VPs’, deals with the structure of Finnish sentences. M assumes that verb phrases (VPs) have a layered structure, which consists of a lexical verb with only a very basic meaning and several little vPs that each add a se­mantic dimension such as agentivity and causativity. Ch. 6 is concerned with ‘The position of Finnish manner adverbials’. M assumes that both obligatory and optional manner adverbials, uniformly treated by the computational system of language, should be seen as arguments of the verb. Whereas the order of themes and manner adverbials in Finnish is fixed, the order of sentence-final adverbials (e.g. manner, place, time) is not. M hypothesizes that sometimes an unambiguous hierarchical structure does not need an unambiguous linear ordering. She argues that her analyses, primarily supported by Finnish data, will hold for other languages as well.

Although intended for a general audience of those interested in Finnish linguistics, the technical language limits the readership primarily to scholars with a good understanding of generative linguistics. The arguments are clearly arranged, and regular summaries at the beginnings and the ends of the chapters and sections promote clarity.

Reviewed by Sabine Zerbian, University of the Witwatersrand

This collection, of which some articles were presented at a 2003 workshop in Leiden, compiles studies discussing theoretical, representational, acoustic, perceptual, and acquisitional aspects of voicing in Dutch. The empirical data covered range from final devoicing, fricative devoicing, and voicing assimilation to acoustic and perceptual cues of voiced and voiceless initial plosives in Dutch. The collection may be of interest to linguists whose specialty is in languages other than Dutch for two reasons. First, some of the empirical data discussed in this collection are also known from other languages, such as final devoicing, which is widespread in the West Germanic languages (with the exception of English). Second, the intricacy of the rules manipulating voice has informed theoretical claims about the correct featural representation of voice in phonological theory.

The collection contains six articles. Ch.1 by Wim Zonneveld, ‘Issues in Dutch devoicing: Positional faithfulness, positional markedness, and local conjunction’ (1–40), provides an optimality theoretic account of the intricate facts on devoicing in Dutch. It reviews the existing literature (both rule-based and constraint-based) and identifies the shortcomings of existing analyses.

In Ch. 2, ‘Representations of [voice]: Evidence from acquisition’ (41–80), René Kager, Suzanne van der Feest, Paula Fikkert, Annemarie Kerkhoff, and Tania S. Zamuner investigate the phonological representation of the feature that accounts for voicing and aspiration in initial plosives in English, Dutch, and German. The authors review the dispute in the literature as to whether one feature [voice] accounts for both voicing and aspiration differences, or if there are multiple features involved, namely [voice] for prevoicing in initial stops in Dutch, and [spread glottis] for aspiration in English and German. On the basis of data from early language acquisition in all three languages, it is argued that an analysis involving multiple features is appropriate.

Marc van Oostendorp presents an interesting dialectal exception to final devoicing in Dutch in Ch. 3, ‘Exceptions to final devoicing’ (81–98). Both eastern and southern dialects of Dutch lack final devoicing in the first person singular with a stem-final fricative showing a long vowel in the final syllable. The article suggests combining the morphological and phonological context into a phonotactic condition, arguing that phonologically, Dutch fricatives have a length contrast rather than a voicing contrast, and morphologically, the historical first person singular suffix is still present as an abstract vocalic position.

In Ch. 4, ‘Prevoicing in Dutch initial plosives: Production, perception, and word recognition’ (99–124), Petra M. van Alphen analyzes the voicing contrast in Dutch initial stops, which is commonly attributed to the presence and absence of prevoicing, i.e. vocal fold vibration during stop closure. The article discusses a series of psycholinguistic priming experiments that examine the effect of variation in prevoicing on word recognition. The results show that prevoicing is only used as a cue to word recognition if there are words in the lexicon that compete in initial voicing.

Ch. 5 by Wouter Jansen, ‘Dutch regressive voicing assimilation as a “low level phonetic process”: Acoustic evidence’ (125–52), presents data from a study on the voicing of word-final /ps/ sequences. The results show that obstruent + fricative sequences are not exempt from regressive voicing assimilation in Dutch, contrary to claims in the literature.

Mirjam Ernestus and R. Harald Baayen conclude this volume in Ch. 6, ‘Intraparadigmatic effects on the perception of voice’ (153–47). The authors address the incomplete neutralization of finally devoiced consonants. They present a perception task in which listeners rate neutralized plosives as more voiced. The authors suggest that perception is influenced by the listener’s knowledge of the obstruents’ realization in the word’s morphological paradigm.

In sum, by bringing together phonological, phonetic, and psycholinguistic research on voicing in Dutch, this volume advances the overall understanding of this phenomenon. Hopefully, more collections will be published that follow this approach.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Grace Winkler, Western Kentucky University

The chapters of this book began as segments on a radio show called Talkin’ about Talk put together by the board of directors of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in response to the joint proclamation by the United States Senate and House of Representatives declaring 2005 the Year of Languages. The texts for the radio broadcasts were created by a group of well-known scholars who covered a broad range of key topics (sixty in all) in both theoretical and applied linguistics (although the preponderance of the topics are applied in nature given the target audience). These broadcasts can still be accessed at the ACTFL website at www.actfl.org.

Each chapter title is a question of the type that linguists are commonly asked by family and friends in social situations or by new students of linguistics. Some chapters focus on language origin, such as Barry Hilton’s ‘What was the original language?’ or Allan Bomhard’s ‘Do all languages come from the same source?’. Other contributors focus on the acquisition of language, like Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek’s ‘How do babies learn their mother tongue?’. There are also chapters on how to acquire a second language in or out of the classroom. A number of chapters explore sociolinguistic issues, such as dialects, language change, language rights, and language survival and extinction. From the theoretical perspective, Peter Ladefoged talks about how sounds are made, Joan Bybee discusses the origins of grammar, and David Savignac looks at machine translation.

Each of the contributors has done an admirable job of providing, sufficient information in a brief format (about three pages) to allow for a basic understanding of each topic. The contributors effectively address their target audience informatively and entertainingly, which may inspire readers to learn more about many of the topics.

The chapters include information not presented in the original radio broadcasts. For example, a short research biography is provided for the author at the end of each chapter. Additionally, each chapter includes an index of chapters that deal with related topics and a carefully compiled bibliography of readings that are generally target-audience accessible. Each suggested reading is accompanied by a brief description that clarifies its level of difficulty and comprehensiveness.  This book is an accessible and entertaining introduction to linguistics well suited to the general reader.

Reviewed by Jill Ward, University of Illinois

This book is Miriam A. Eliasson’s doctoral thesis at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet. The thesis aims to understand the causes and effects of verbal abuse in school by conducting four studies in which students in grades six and eight in mid-sized Swedish towns are surveyed, interviewed, and observed. E’s specific focus is on how gender and age are constructed by verbal abuse, acknowledging the need for further research into class, race, and ethnicity. The book is organized much like a lengthy article, with an introduction, aims, methods, summary of main results, discussion, and conclusions (as well as acknowledgments and references). Rather unusual is the inclusion of four of E’s original articles from which the thesis was generated. These studies provide examples of the verbal abuse that is described in the main thesis.

The ‘Introduction’ (1–15) provides background on previous research on verbal abuse in school, and a brief description of the Swedish school system. Theoretical frameworks of social constructionism, discourse analysis, and identity construction are discussed as they are used for analysis. In the ‘Aims’ section (16), E details objectives for understanding the construction of gender and age through verbal abuse, and the meaning-making potential this abuse has for students. ‘Methods’ (17–24) describes the four studies that were conducted by the author, including a survey of grades six and eight students in the mid-sized Swedish city of Uddevalla and observations and interviews of grade eight students and teachers in inner-city and suburban Stockholm.

Studies 1–4 are analyzed in the ‘Summary of main results’ (25–33). Study 1 finds that boys tend to be verbally abusive the most, often towards both boys and girls. Girls tend to receive sexual name-calling. However, all students’ well-being diminishes with increased abuse. Study 2 demonstrates that there are different gendered perceptions of verbal abuse. Boys who do not abuse are constructed as being feminine. Additionally, while this abuse may be considered friendly among boys, among girls abuse is considered immature and negative. Study 3 brings in notions of maturity in verbal abuse, which is generally considered a phase of adolescence. Study 4 shows how removal of agency can be used as an excuse to abuse. As a result, abusive terms may lose their meaning as they are repeated.

‘Discussion’ follows (34–47), delving deeper into students’ meaning-making of insults and the construction of age and gender (and by extension, sexuality) with respect to verbal abuse and who has access to it. Other factors, such as ethnicity and class, may also contribute to identity construction through verbal abuse, but E acknowledges the necessity of further research in this area. The strengths and limitations of these studies are discussed in this section along with implications for schools and for further research.

E’s ‘Conclusions’ (48–49) show the prevalence of verbal abuse used in heterosexual and masculine construction of the eighth-grade boys as it relates to power and status within the school hierarchy.

Reviewed by Colette van Kerckvoorde, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

As part of a new series on the dialects of English, this book offers a clear and concise introduction to the linguistic features of Singapore English. David Deterding describes the variety of educated Singapore English that is now emerging (and that is not to be confused with colloquial Singapore English, commonly known as Singlish). D is not trying to discover new patterns but instead presents and provides illustrative materials for features that are already widely known and discussed. The sample sentences in the book can be accessed as sound files on an accompanying website.

Based on the introductory chapter, it is clear that D writes for those without prior knowledge of the linguistic situation in Singapore. He provides a good overview of relevant facts and numbers for English use in Singapore, focusing on the island’s history and linguistic situation. The author then describes the sources for the linguistic data used in this volume, addressing their flaws as well as their advantages. Three kinds of data are used. Most important are the speech samples provided by a thirty-four year old ethnically Chinese female Singaporean undergraduate student who reports that English is now her best language. D describes this speaker, whom he calls Hui Min, as exceptionally clear and highly articulate and claims that her speech is distinctly Singaporean (8). Hui Min’s one-hour recordings provide a good basis for an analysis of the phonological features. In later chapters, an existing corpus, the National Institute of Education Corpus of Spoken Singapore English (NIECSSE), is used, as it provides more examples of syntactic and lexical phenomena particular to Singaporean English. Finally, several blogs are also used.

The second chapter deals with phonetics and phonology. In Ch. 3, morphology and syntax are addressed, while Ch. 4 contains a description of discourse and lexis. D provides good descriptions of the linguistic features and also gives an overview of recent research for those features that are most emblematic of Singapore English, e.g. the discourse particle lah is given ample attention. Ch. 5 further explores the recent history of Singapore English and highlights the government’s efforts in promoting English language use.

Chs. 6 and 7 contain resources that would be beneficial to the reader. In Ch. 6, D provides an annotated bibliography of the topics covered throughout the book. Ch. 7 contains the transcripts for the Hui Min data.

The author concludes that a mature variety of educated Singapore English with many particular features of speech is indeed emerging, though it can, of course, still be easily understood in the rest of the world.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the current development of World Englishes. D does not make any use of difficult or intimidating linguistic jargon, thus making this work highly accessible.