Reviewed by Wolfgang Schulze, University of Munich

This volume is part of the series drawn from the famous collection The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages (WAL). WAL covers forty-four languages, eleven of which are described in the present collection. This selection concentrates on languages in the region defined by the editors as Asia Minor: This includes the Asian parts of present-day Turkey as well as Armenia and Georgia. Specifically, Asia Minor covers three genetic domains: (i) Indo-European (e.g. Armenian, Anatolian, and non-Anatolian), (ii) Southern Caucasian (e.g. Old Georgian), and (iii) Hurro-Urartian. Unfortunately, this volume neglects (Proto-)Hattic, a language documented mainly in Hattic-Hittite bilingual texts and Hattic passages in Hittite sources. Another language that should be included in this context is Caucasian Albanian, a precursor of Udi (a Southeast Caucasian minority language in Northern Azerbaijan). However, Caucasian Albanian became known only after the volume was edited—namely, in 2009, when Jost Gippert, Wolfgang Schulze, and others deciphered and published newly discovered texts of this ancient language (from roughly 500 AD). Except for these two languages, this volume covers all of the relevant remains of the languages of Asia Minor, thus providing an extremely valuable text and source book.

Contrary to other volumes of the same series (e.g. The ancient languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Aksum), the authors of the individual sections of this book faced the problem that only some of the languages have a broader documentation: Languages such as Palaic, Carian, Lycian, and Phrygian lack comprehensive sources. Hence, their description cannot be anything but fragmentary. This aspect is mirrored by the fact that the overall length of the individual chapters differs considerably. For instance, some twenty pages are devoted to Classical Armenian, but only five to Carian and six to Palaic.

This book starts with a brief introduction by the editor (1–5), followed by a description of the Indo-European languages that were present in Anatolia. Hittite is described first, because it is the best documented and hence best known language in this region (by Calvert Watkins; 6–30). The subsequent chapters on Luvian (31–39), Palaic (40–45), Lycian (46–55), Lydian (56–63), and Carian (64–68) are authored by H. Craig Melchert. The chapter on Phrygian by Claude Brixhe (69–80) concludes this section. Gernot Wilhelm turns to the Hurro-Urartian cluster (Hrurrian, 81–104; and Urartian, 105–23). The two Transcaucasian languages, Classical Armenian by James P.T. Clackson (124–44) and Old Georgian by Kevin Tuite, 145–65), complete the core of this volume, followed by an appendix on the cuneiform script and indices.

The degree of certainty regarding grammatical and lexical issues as well as quality and quantity of the documented sources reinforce the contents of the individual chapters. For instance, the descriptions of Classical Armenian and Old Georgian are necessarily condensed, but not at all lacking. Other descriptions, such as the chapter on Carian, reflect nearly everything that is known about the language. However, each chapter is marked for a very careful and unbiased presentation of the relevant data. Naturally, all of the authors—pronounced experts in their fields—show preferences for certain views and analytic proposals. But these views are nearly always contrasted with alternative views and hypotheses. Hence, the individual descriptions can undoubtedly serve as a doorway to the world of these ancient languages, stimulating the reader to make additional use of the extensive bibliographical references. Many readers will enjoy that they can now easily check what is known about a given language without having to consult the often disperse and far-flung literature.

The format of the individual descriptions comes close to what has been called basic linguistic theory. In most cases, the descriptive tools are theory-neutral, although many articles show a certain preference for labels borrowed from language typology. This allows readers not acquainted with the idiosyncratic descriptive labels typical for some domains to easily understand a given analysis. This positive effect is further supported by a very reader-friendly format that includes easy-to-read tables, charts, and figures. In fact, this volume (as it is true for its companion volumes) is edited in a way that makes it a joy to browse through the chapters and discover details about the fascinating world of ancient languages in Asia Minor.

Reviewed by Wolfgang Schulze, University of Munich

This volume is part of the series drawn from the famous collection The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages (WAL). WAL covers forty-four languages, seven of which are described in the present collection. This selection concentrates on the languages of Mesopotamia (i.e. Sumerian, Elamite, and Akkadian [including Eblaite]) and the languages of Egypt and Ethiopia (i.e. Old Egyptian, Coptic, and Ge’ez), thus covering two isolated languages (i.e. Sumerian and Elamite), three Semitic languages (i.e. Akkadian, Elbaite, and Ge’ez), and two non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages (i.e. Old Egyptian and Coptic). The individual chapters are written by experts of high renown who escape from offering speculative details typically proposed for some of these languages.

This book starts with a brief, but very informative, introductory chapter by Roger D. Woodard, the editor of the volume (1–5). Each individual chapter begins with a section that addresses questions of language (pre-)history including cultural and ethnic issues, followed by a presentation of the language’s writing system and issues of phonetics, phonology, and phonotactics. Note that for both Akkadian and Egyptian, this section is more elaborate; sign lists for both cuneiforms and hieroglyphs are presented. The subsequent sections are organized traditionally; covering issues of morphology, syntax, and the lexicon. All chapters close with a reading list that is selective with respect to the larger languages (e.g. Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian) but rather exhaustive for the smaller ones (e.g. Elamite and Ge’ez). Unfortunately, the descriptive sections for the individual languages do not include longer sample texts that would help the reader to become more familiar with the language.

Nevertheless, all of the chapters document the given language to a very high standard: Once the reader has gone through the many details, they can safely claim to have more than just a basic notion of the nature of these languages. The overall strength of the individual articles is given by the fact that the authors carefully discuss different proposals related to the interpretation of both sociolinguistic and linguistic issues. They constantly refrain from highlighting their ideas to the disadvantage of other proposals. At the same time, the authors never comply with suggestions that stem from nonscientific hypotheses, which is especially crucial to the dimension of Sumerian and Elamite prehistory.

The main body of this book starts with a description of Sumerian by Piotr Michalowski (6–46), followed by the section on Elamite by Matthew W. Stolper (47–82). John Huehnergard and Christopher Woods provided the section on Akkadian (focusing on Old Babylonian) and Eblaite (83–152). Egyptian and Coptic are described by Antonia Loprieno (153–210), and Gene Gragg acquaints the reader with Ge’ez (the language of Aksum; 211–37).

The editor has nicely managed to keep the balance between the prerogatives of a generalizing descriptive template and the idiosyncratic descriptive traditions typical for some of the languages. The overall descriptive template becomes visible especially with the way the authors provide interlinear glosses for the many examples. The idiosyncratic traditions, on the other hand, are present with, for example, the transcription or transliteration systems that may change form language to language. The fact that these systems are correlated with the standard pattern of phonological charts easily helps the reader to understand the given transcription system.

The sections on morphosyntax are strongly oriented towards the descriptive standard of language typology. This fact should be especially welcomed by readers interested in the use of language data for typological and other generalizing purposes. In this respect, the presentation of languages such as Elamite and Ge’ez fills a major gap in the typological database of languages. These languages are usually considered by specialists only, the work of which is often difficult to access. Now, these two languages share the level of descriptive presentation given for many other languages and thus allow for exploitation in the same sense. The section on Ge’ez has additional strength because the author constantly refers to both Arabic and Akkadian to illustrate the commonalities and divergences of Ge’ez with respect to other Semitic languages.

Furthermore, each chapter takes into consideration the fact that the language is represented by corpora that cover a rather long span of time (except for Eblaite and Ge’ez). Hence, the descriptions share a strong diachronic component that allows the reader to understand the development of the individual languages over (in the case of Egyptian) more than 3000 years. In fact, the section on Egyptian can be easily read as an admittedly condensed historical grammar of the language in its different stages, including its last stage—namely, Coptic. In other words, this chapter helps to better understand the origins of Coptic itself.

This volume is kept in an extremely reader-friendly and very appealing format that is full of examples, illustrations, and charts. It can be used not only by specialists who want to quickly check specific data but also by anyone who wants to learn more about the fascinating world of early Mesopotamian and Egyptian languages.

Reviewed by Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University

The question of iconicity in language recently enjoyed a revival primarily in the functional and cognitive approaches to language popular in the 1980s. Nowadays iconicity commands interest beyond linguistics in a number of neighboring disciplines such as philosophy and semiotics. However, the field is still full of open questions such as whether there is something like iconicity in language at all. Often associated with iconicity is the concept of naturalness, which, in theories like natural morphology, seems to presuppose some concept of iconicity. The present volume focuses on these topics, beginning with rather broad philosophical and semiotic approaches before advancing towards more concrete linguistic studies.

An introduction by the editors (1–23) is followed by four papers in philosophy and semiotics. In ‘Philosophical naturalism and linguistic epistemology’ (25–46) Lia Formigari contrasts two major forms of naturalism in modern linguistics—namely, what she labels as Noam Chomsky’s internalist naturalism and Willard Van Orman Quine’s externalist naturalism. Formigari sees the choice between these two types of naturalism as essentially methodological but suggests that Quinean naturalism may be ultimately more attractive to linguists as it does not ‘isolate language from other cognitive and behavioral competences’ (44).

Based on his work in pictorial semiotics, Göran Sonesson (‘Prolegomena to a general theory of iconicity considerations on language, gesture, and pictures’; 47–72) points out a potential distinction of six different types of iconic relationships and argues against scales or degrees of iconicity.

In ‘Semiotic foundations of natural linguistics and diagrammatic iconicity’ (73–100), Winfried Nöth suggests that iconicity is inherent in all kinds of well-formed linguistic constructions. The phenomena usually discussed under the heading of iconicity merely exhibit an extra degree of it.

Henning Andersen’s ‘Naturalness and markedness’ (101–19) marks a shift to papers on linguistics proper within this volume. In his contribution, Andersen compares naturalness theory and markedness theory and concludes that markedness theory better accounts for variation and change essentially subsuming naturalness theory.

In ‘Natural and unnatural sound patterns: A pocket field guide’ (121–48) Juliette Blevins tries to clarify and exemplify the notions of natural sound patterns as patterns that can be explained in terms of how humans articulate and perceive speech. Adducing evidence from various types of research, she argues for keeping the issue of naturalness in phonetics and phonology strictly separate from the same issue in grammar.

José Carlos Prado-Alonso’s ‘The iconic function of full inversion in English’ (149–65) is a corpus-based study of full inversion involving prepositional phrases, as in the sentence On the back seat was a heap of packages. He concludes that full inversion has different discourse functions, which depend on the type of text genre in which it is used.

In ‘What is iconic about polysemy? A contribution to research on diagrammatic transparency’ (167–87) Daniela Marzo claims that polysemy, in contrast to conventional thinking, is in fact iconic in terms of diagrammatic transparency. A questionnaire study shows that transparency is greater in the case of polysemy motivated by metaphor than in the case of polysemy motivated by contiguity.

In ‘Iconicity in sign languages’ (189–214) Eline Demey, Mieke Van Herreweghe, and Myriam Vermeerbergen promote the view that iconicity is pervasive in sign languages, particularly as a kind of superstructure. They point out that one of the differences between spoken and signed languages is that in sign languages, even low-level form elements are meaningful—that is, the phonemic and the morphemic level coincide.

In the last article, ‘Arbitrary structure, cognitive grammar, and the partes orationis: A study in Polish paradigms’ (215–39), Dylan Glynn offers a cautionary tale. In contrast to cognitive grammar, which claims iconic motivation for parts of speech, Glynn’s study of the Polish vocabulary of precipitation reveals that iconic motivation cannot explain lexeme-class compositionality in this semantic field.

The introduction by the editors offers an excellent overview of issues in the study of naturalness, especially iconicity. A name index and a subject index complete this book. Iconicity is somewhat better served in this volume, especially as one of the three articles on naturalness (e.g. Formigari) discusses naturalness in a quite different sense than the editors and the other contributors (e.g. Andersen, Blevins). Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution to the study of iconicity and naturalness, which will also be of interest to nonspecialists.

Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

This book, a Groningen dissertation, outlines two models of language change, discussing them in light of data from fifteenth century West Frisian texts. The first model is largely predictive, intended to model vowel reduction as a phonetic process, and focuses on vowels in individual words, rather than on vowels as abstract phonemes. The second model is more speaker-oriented, assigning the speaker the role of evaluating the language of other speakers and in turn estimating other speakers’ reactions to their own speech. Both of these models are rooted in the idea that language is ‘a deterministic dynamic system, governed by self-organisation’ (14). In the author’s view, both of these models are able to predict correctly various types of language change. Fifteenth century West Frisian was chosen as the data source for a number of reasons, ranging from the more pragmatic (a readily accessible electronic corpus is available) to the more philosophical (it exhibits a number of intriguing developments, including open syllable lengthening, syncope, degemination, and various changes in the case and gender system).

This book consists of six chapters: the ‘Introduction’ (1–79), which lays out the parameters of the study; ‘Description of processes’ (81–201), which reviews the developments analyzed in this book; ‘Phonological interpretation’ (203–24), which analyzes the various developments in phonological terms; ‘Late mediaeval Frisian as a tonal language’ (225–56), which draws parallels between the Frisian situation and various tonal Scandinavian dialects and therefore concludes that late medieval Frisian was also tonal; ‘Modelling language change’ (257–94), which returns to the theoretical aspects of the study; and ‘Concluding remarks’ (295–303). The book also contains an extensive list of references, numerous maps, summaries in English and Dutch, and various indices.

There is much to admire in this book. Arjen Versloot has an excellent command of the material and has striven to communicate his grasp of and enthusiasm for the subject to the reader. In some ways, this attempt has been successful: The claim that late medieval Frisian was a tone language, for instance, is thoughtful and carefully-argued, and is rooted in parallels from both the Scandinavian languages and the West Germanic languages (e.g. certain Franconian dialects). In other ways, unfortunately, this book is somewhat less admirable: An excellent dissertation is not always an excellent book, and this volume regrettably falls into that category. Too many ideas are discussed and discarded that should probably have been removed before publication, there are some startling gaps in the bibliography (e.g. there is no reference to Tomas Riad’s work on the development of the Scandinavian accentual system or Willem Visser’s work on the syllable in Frisian), translations from other languages into English are not always completely accurate, and the entire book could have used a careful editing job by a native speaker of English to correct various stylistic and grammatical errors. These objections aside, this book will be of value for those interested in historical linguistics, Germanic linguistics, and Frisian.

Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

This book contains eighteen papers (two in German and the rest in English) originally presented at a section meeting of the XVI International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held in Copenhagen in August 2003. These papers address a broad range of topics, drawing on data from languages like Tocharian, Latin, and Old Irish. As the limitations of this forum preclude a full commentary on and evaluation of all of the papers in this volume, only a few will be discussed here.

Brigitte Bauer discusses ‘Residues as an aid in internal reconstruction’ (17–31) and argues that the use of residues in internal reconstruction will enable researchers to reconstruct earlier stages of proto-languages than internal reconstruction without residues allows. Adam Hyllested’s paper, ‘Internal reconstruction vs. external comparison: The case of the Indo-Uralic laryngeals’ (111–36), is broader in scope, as it looks at data from both Indo-European and Uralic, with an eye to determining the fate of Nostratic laryngeals in these two language families. Jay Jasanoff’s ‘*-bhi, *-bhis, *-ōis: Following the trail of the PIE instrumental plural’ (137–49) first reconstructs *-is as the oldest instrumental plural ending in Proto-Indo-European and then uses this newly-reconstructed ending to account for various other developments in Indo-European (e.g. the Anatolian neuter plural ending –e).

In ‘How many noun suffixes did Proto-Indo-European have?’ (187–204) Birgit Anette Olsen reviews the dizzying array of nominal suffixes that have been reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European and argues that internal reconstruction allows for the reduction of this long list. Finally, in the last paper in this volume, Jens Elmegård Rasmussen poses the question of ‘Internal reconstruction applied to Indo-European: where do we stand?’ (255–68) and offers a state-of-the-art report by way of an answer.

Other papers in this volume include: ‘Genitive and adjective: Primary parts of the Proto-Indo-European language-system’ (73–84) by Sabine Häusler, ‘The range of Tocharian a-umlaut’ (171–79) by Martin Kümmel, ‘The Indo-European long-vowel preterite: New Latin evidence’ (205–12) by Moss Pike, and ‘Die semantische Rekonstruktion von Wortbildungssystemen (am Beispiel von Verbalabstrakta im Germanischen)’ (213–27) by Natalia B. Pimenova.

As noted above, these papers were originally presented orally in 2003. While it is unfortunate that their publication was delayed until 2009, the papers in this volume are almost uniformly interesting and well-argued, giving a valuable snapshot of the use of internal reconstruction in Indo-European linguistics today. Publication values are high; the volume is sturdily-bound and typos are normally minor and self-correcting. However, a few of the papers could have used a careful editing by a native speaker of English.

Reviewed by Irene Theodoropoulou, King’s College London

This book is a corpus linguistic study that compares the language of the popular sitcom Friends with the language used in natural American English conversation. In Ch. 1, Paulo Quaglio summarizes the core literature on conversation and television studies and provides the motivation for his choice to focus on a linguistic analysis of TV language—that is, to add to the relatively under-researched interaction between the media and language change.

Ch. 2 offers a description of the comedy series Friends and its characters, which are often illustrated through dialogue excerpts. Ch. 3 provides quantitative (i.e. number of files and words) and qualitative (i.e. interaction types and topics) information on the corpora used in this study, which is supplemented by a discussion on data coding, concordancing, norming, and statistical significance.

Ch. 4 presents the theoretical framework of the study, that of register variation or multidimensional analysis (Biber 1988), as well as the basic findings of the study. The data demonstrate that the shared interactive nature of both natural conversation and the language of Friends are reflected by the high frequency and occurrence of certain devices such as private verbs, first- and second-person pronouns, present tense verbs, contractions, and hedges. However, Friends shows less variation than natural conversation, which can be explained by the restricted range of situations, age groups, and dialectal varieties found in the Friends corpus.

Chs. 5–8 illustrate the functional differences between the Friends corpus and natural American English conversation. Vague language, the focus of Ch. 5, includes conversational hedges, discourse and stance markers, and vague coordination tags. Natural conversation was found to be vaguer than the language of Friends, while the lack of vagueness of the Friends’ language is explained by its need to be understood in a global context, which tends to compromise the naturalness of dialogues

Ch. 6 analyzes emotional language—namely, emphatic forms and expressions. Q finds that the language of Friends is more emotional and emphatic than natural conversation, and this dramatic effect is mostly realized through the cooccurrence of features in the same or adjacent turns

Informal language, discussed in Ch. 7, indexed through expletives, slang, vocatives (i.e. familiarizers), and linguistic innovations (e.g. all plus adjective or gerund, semimodals, and repeats) was found to be much more frequent in Friends, a fact that can be explained by the intimacy among the members of the group, the effort to make the show’s language as authentic as possible, and the construction of humor through idiosyncratic uses of these devices.

Ch. 8 delves into the linguistic expression of narrative discourse and compares the degrees of narratives typifying narrative and nonnarrative discourse in both corpora. The finding is that natural conversation has a higher frequency of the linguistic features associated with narrative discourse.

Finally, Ch. 9 wraps up the findings, accounts for the limitations of the study, and refers to its benefits, which include the use of television dialogue for pedagogical purposes.

In all, this study is presented in an accessible way; nevertheless, it would be better if the index contained the numerous linguistic features that are discussed. This would make the book a useful reference for people who are investigating a specific linguistic feature.

Reference

Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

This book opens with an anecdote: On July 4, 2000, the author was asked to participate in a radio interview about the accuracy of the English used in the movie The Patriot. The end result was somewhat disappointing, as the author’s best efforts to offer a nuanced, scholarly discussion of the topic were glossed over by the interviewer, who concluded only that at the time of the Revolutionary War ‘Americans preserved a traditional accent and […] the British […] had changed the language’ (2). This anecdote nicely sets up the subject of the book: ‘How anxiety over language change and variation has transhistorically motivated and underwritten sociopolitical behavior, ideological formation, and mythological construction—how it has been largely a constant in the Anglophone world’ (22). Tim Machan argues that ‘anxiety over language change has euphemistically displaced anxiety about other issues and […] so long as the anxiety remains centered on language, the other issues can never be fully addressed’ (22).

This idea is developed in detail over the course of six chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Language, change, and response’ (1–26), looks at theories of language change and variation as well as anxiety about language change (e.g. compare the connection often drawn by nonlinguists between language change and moral or social collapse). This is followed by ‘A moveable speech’ (27–90), which tackles the question of ‘the sometimes shifting distinction between social evaluations of change and change itself’ (29).

Ch. 3, ‘Narratives of change’ (81–129), reviews some discussions of language change, such as narratives of the Tower of Babel story, and also outlines the development of the artificial language Esperanto. Next, ‘Policy and politics’ (130–85) discusses political aspects of language change, such as the controversy surrounding early translations of the Bible into English or the suppression of Maori in favor of English in New Zealand.

Ch. 5, ‘Say the right thing’ (186–237), examines the ‘ways in which metalinguistic commentary, like literary narratives and public policy, can be determinative in speakers’ attitudes towards change and variation’ (233). Finally, ‘Fixing English’ (238–66), looks at the value invested in language variation and change—for example, how meanings and values become attached to individual words, and how these meanings and values can shift over time. M concludes this chapter by arguing that ‘to assign blame to language, and to minister to it alone, provides short-term solutions to long-term social problems’ (266), as this ‘allows speakers to evade responsibility for what they say [… and] allows them to deny responsibility for what they do’ (266).

This is an excellent book. The subject matter is extremely interesting, the book is well-written, and the arguments are carefully crafted. The only quibbles that I have (e.g. the use of primitive in terms like Primitive Germanic, where the term Proto would be more appropriate) are relatively minor and do not detract from the genuinely high value of this work.

Reviewed by Richard W. Hallett, Northeastern Illinois University

In Travelling in a palimpsest: Finnish nineteenth-century painters’ encounters with Spanish art and culture, Marie-Sofie Lundström examines the works of three Finnish painters, Adolf von Becker, Albert Edelfelt, and Venny Soldan, who visited Spain in the 1800s to establish how their perceptions of Spain were ‘manifested in their pictures in response to the growing tourist industry in nineteenth-century Europe’ (14). In this examination, L combines the areas of art history and tourism studies and considers each of these artists’ oeuvres a palimpsest—that is, ‘a superposition of modern and ancient patterns’ (16). L’s introduction (11–41) presents an overview of the notion of palimpsest and how it can be used to discuss tourist art in particular.

In Ch. 1, ‘The lure of Spain’ (43–58), L discusses the importance of Swedish artist Egron Lundgren, whose ‘fame in Scandinavia made his Spanish imagery particularly important for the emerging view of the characteristics of the Spanish people’ (57). L expands on this theme in Ch. 2, ‘Les dieux et les demi-dieux de la peinture’ (59–83). The growing popularity of Spanish-themed tourist art led to a demand that artists have direct contact with Spain. Ch. 3, ‘Adolf von Becker and the manière espagnole’ (85–132), provides an in-depth analysis of the first Finnish painter to travel to Spain to study and imitate Spanish art.

Ch. 4, ‘The dichotomy of hispanicism: Old masters and popular themes’ (133–205), examines the work of Albert Edelfelt, who apprenticed under von Becker. In Ch. 5, ‘Albert Edelfelt’s imagined Spain’ (207–46), L continues this examination and coins the term connoisseur-tourist, which describes ‘painters travelling abroad in order to enhance their career[s] as painters’ (236). Ch. 6, ‘The Romantic lure of the souvenir’ (247–307), argues that a pictorial souvenir is the most common type of souvenir. In the nineteenth century the pictorial souvenir was tourist art; today it is the ubiquitous postcard.

The focus of Ch. 7, ‘Change and the tourist experience’ (309–51), Edelfelt’s travels in Seville, where he was more of a tourist than he had been in Granada. Ch. 8, ‘The Romantic craze for history’ (353–86), focuses on the history of Spain and the need to show an ancient past to be considered a modern nation state. The book concludes with Ch. 9, ‘Spain remembered: Travelling in a palimpsest’ (387–401), which summarizes how Finnish painters of Spanish tourist art traveled metaphorically in a palimpsest.

With 237 figures, this book is richly illustrated. It will be of particular interest to linguists working in semiotics as well as those working in the discourse of tourism.

Reviewed by Irene Theodoropoulou, King’s College London

This volume consists of sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological chapters that focus on stance—that is, ‘taking up a position with respect to the form or the content of one’s utterance’ (3). Stance is a core notion in the sociolinguistic enterprise because this positioning is inherent in human communication.

Alexandra Jaffe’s ‘Introduction: The sociolinguistics of stance’ critically discusses the relationship between stance and other key topics (e.g. ideology, style, and indexicality), concluding that this type of research should aim for the interpretation of indexicalization and contextualization in communication.

Barbara Johnstone’s ‘Stance, style, and the linguistic individual’ examines the Barbara Jordan style from a rhetorical and discourse-analytical perspective. Based on repeated patterns of stance-taking, Johnstone argues for this African-American politician’s consistent authoritative stance across time, situation, audience, and genre of speech.

Judith Irvine’s ‘Stance in a colonial encounter: How Mr. Taylor lost his footing’ analyzes archival material from the Church Missionary Society’s nineteenth-century dispute in West Africa (i.e. the Onitsha affair) by stressing stance’s ability to explain how communicative acts are linked to ideologized processes and social structures.

Janet McIntosh’s ‘Stance and distance: Social boundaries, self-lamination, and metalinguistic anxiety in white Kenyan narratives about the African occult’ looks at the complexities of first-person indexicality by white Kenyans in their attitudes toward the African occult and stresses the discrepancy between Kenyans’ ontological and social stances, which result in multiple subjectivities in the process.

Robin Shoaps’s ‘Moral irony and moral personhood in Sakapultek discourse and culture’ delves into moral irony in this Mayan language by demonstrating how ironic stances hinge on indexicality rather than intentionality. Shoaps calls for the need to incorporate ethnographic research, which can elucidate the social functions of stance markers.

Jaffe’s ‘Stance in a Corsican school: Institutional and ideological orders and the production of bilingual subjects’ deals with the ways teachers’ stances delineate bilingual (French-Corsican) practices and identities as well as attribute stances to their students by maintaining that the links between language and wider categories, including ideologies and hierarchies, are themselves stance objects.

Mary Bucholtz’s ‘From stance to style: Gender, interaction, and indexicality in Mexican immigrant youth slang’ taps into the multiple indexicalities of the Spanish slang term güey, stemming from its use in Mexican students’ interactions and its media representations. Bucholtz underlines the need to combine the fleeting peculiarities of interactional context with the more enduring formations that tie stances to styles and identities.

Echoing this position, on the basis of data from the United States and Australia, Scott Kiesling’s ‘Style as stance: Stance as the explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation’ makes the important argument that stance can explain intraspeaker variation.

Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow’s ‘Taking an elitist stance: Ideology and the discursive production of social distinction’ investigates how travel writing (i.e. traveloques) in two widespread British newspapers employs stancetaking to construct the writers and readers as socially different and, through the wide accessibility of the newspapers, to ideologize these stances socially.

Finally, Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland’s ‘Attributing stance in discourses of body shape and weight loss’ shows how authoritative voices in geriatric doctor-patient encounters and magazines that focus on weight and body shape attribute moral stances to laypeople.

Notwithstanding some dense linguistic anthropological analyses, the volume contains some pioneering chapters that will be of interest to researchers engaged in social pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

Reviewed by Iris Potter, University of Georgia

Although research has been done on minority languages and their uses in education, this research can generally be compartmentalized into studies of elite bilingual education and studies of folk bilingual education. In an effort to broaden the implications of such research on the field of applied linguistics, Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter compiled this volume, which is comprised of five case studies. The research reported here examines unique minority folk-bilingual education situations in which the speakers do not suffer from the typical economic disadvantages found in most minority language situations, ensuring that the primary motivation for language learning is to enhance one’s identity. These studies of programs of minority language revitalization in Europe illustrate the importance of language policy and planning in bilingual education.

In the introductory chapter, ‘Applied linguistics and the use of minority languages in education’ (5–12), the editors state that the relevancy of this collection of case studies to the field of applied linguistics is not limited to bilingual education but can be extended to such areas as language and identity, second (and additional) language acquisition, first language literacy, and to the general study of bi- and multilingualism.

In the first of two articles from Spain, Ch. 2 ‘Achievements and challenges in bilingual and multilingual education in the Basque Country’ (13–30), Jasone Cenoz examines multiple models of instruction using both Spanish and Basque. She discusses some of the potential advantages of employing more comprehensive methods in multilingual instruction and research.

In Ch. 3, ‘Language-in-education policies in the Catalan language area’ (31–48), F. Xavier Vila i Moreno compares the current models for teaching Catalan and discusses the challenges faced by the educational systems. He summarizes existing research and discusses the impact of these policies on various relevant elements, such as language use and competence, but also on academic results that are not linguistic in nature.

In the first of two articles from Ireland and the United Kingdom, Ch. 4 ‘The declining role of primary schools in the revitalisation of Irish’ (49–68), John Harris discusses the causes of the long-term decline in Irish proficiency in students of mainstream schools. He suggests that teachers and schools develop a plan that would extend the use of Irish beyond language courses to other areas in the schools as well as to the home and community.

In Ch. 5, ‘Current challenges in bilingual education in Wales’ (69–86), W. Gwyn Lewis examines the role of Welsh in the bilingual education system. He then summarizes the current methodologies and the emerging issues and pedagogies.

From the Netherlands, Durk Gorter and Cor van der Meer, ‘Developments in bilingual Frisian-Dutch education in Friesland’ (Ch. 6; 87–103), discuss the weak position of Frisian in society and in the educational system and examine the link between the two. This relationship seems to be reflective of the attitudes toward both Frisian and the educational system, based in part on less than stellar achievements of experimental trilingual schools that incorporate English.

Overall, these five case studies present an encouraging picture of bilingual education aimed at minority language maintenance. The positive results are especially encouraging in Spain and refreshing to hear from all of the other countries.