This article presents a case study of second dialect acquisition by three children over six years as they shift from Canadian to British English. Informed by Chambers's principles of second dialect acquisition, the analysis focuses on a frequent and socially embedded linguistic feature, T-voicing (e.g., pudding versus putting). An extensive corpus and quantitative methods permit tracking the shift to British English as it is happening. Although all of the children eventually sound local, the acquisition process is complex. Frequency of British variants rises incrementally, lagging behind the acquisition of variable constraints, which are in turn ordered by type. Internal patterns are acquired early, while social correlates lag behind. Acceleration of second dialect variants occurs at well-defined sociocultural milestones, particularly entering the school system. Successful second dialect acquisition is a direct consequence of sustained access to and integration with the local speech community.We would like to thank Tara, Shaman, and Freya for their patience and humor in letting us analyze these materials, and especially for the hilarity of their antics, which added greatly to the amount of fun we had in figuring out their second dialect acquisition. This study was inspired by and has also profited from many discussions with our mentor and friend Jack Chambers. We have also benefited from the insightful guidance of Peter Trudgill, both in print and in personal commentary. An anonymous reviewer added an additional perspective. Of course, none of them is responsible for any remaining shortcomings of our analysis or interpretation.

This article reports on a study of standardization and language change in the Basque town of Oiartzun. It presents apparent time evidence suggesting that, while certain local features are giving way to competing standard forms, other emblematic features of the local dialect are not undergoing change. It is argued that the absence of change in the case of emblematic local forms is related to community members' ambivalence toward recent economic and social changes in the town. In particular, in the spirit of Labov's Martha's Vineyard study, it is argued that younger Oiartzuners' retention of emblematic local forms is a way of staking a claim to a local identity undercut by recent housing development and suburbanization. In so doing, this article contributes to a growing body of work on the often unique behavior of emblematic local features in language change, particularly in speech communities undergoing rapid social and economic change.I am grateful to the people of Oiartzun for their support and hospitality during the fieldwork portion of this study. I am also grateful to John Singler, Renée Blake, Ricardo Etxepare, Gregory Guy, Richard Kayne, Bambi Schieffelin, Jaqueline Urla, Koldo Zuazo, an anonymous reviewer, and audiences at the University of York, the University of Ottawa, and NWAV 34 for comments pertaining to some of the data presented here. Special thanks also to Iñaki Arbelaitz, Maider Lekuona, Jabi Elizasu, Ana Arruti, and José Luis Erkizia. All errors are my own. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0317842 and by a Fulbright grant. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This article describes the construction of a corpus of spoken French with a time depth of a century and a half, the Récits du français québécois d'autrefois (RFQ). The folktales, local legends, and interviews constituting the RFQ were produced by speakers born between 1846 and 1895. They spoke the French of 19th-century rural Québec, a variety shown to be replete with the vernacular structures and inherent variability of contemporary dialects. The authors review the advantages and drawbacks associated with this type of diachronic material, and argue that, exploited judiciously, it effectively represents an earlier stage of spoken French. They show how systematic comparison of the RFQ with contemporary vernaculars can help pinpoint the existence, date, and direction of language change.The research on which this article is based was generously funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a Killam Research Fellowship to Poplack. We are very grateful to friends and colleagues Diane Vincent and Claude Poirier of Université Laval, and especially to archivist M. Jean Coulombe and the staff at the Archives of Folklore there. Without their precious collaboration, this project could not have come to fruition. Carmen LeBlanc and Lauren Willis collected much of the data for the RFQ, and, along with Lyne Klapka and Dawn Harvie, also participated in corpus transcription and correction. Our thanks to them and the other members of the research team at the Sociolinguistics Laboratory, University of Ottawa, for their painstaking work.

This study examines two public hearings on a zoning proposal that would allow the construction of a Super Wal-Mart Center on a field over the town's aquifer. Many citizens speak out against the zoning change because of the risk to drinking water, as well as other issues. Citizens face the speaker's problem of how to make their presentations convincing, given the technical matters involved and the fact that Town Board members have likely already heard about these issues. Some speakers draw on the words of others in their presentations. Using another's words allows the speaker to cite an authoritative source or to respond to what another has said, to evaluate it, and often to challenge it. Speakers use other devices in addition to quotes, such as formulations, repetition, and membership categorizations to develop their evaluative stances in the reporting context. The study's focus is the discursive construction and rhetoric of using others' words for the speaker's own purposes.We gratefully acknowledge the early discussions and help in transcribing from Katherine Hobbs, Diana Martinez, and Jackie Smith. Thanks for the useful comments from Jamie Dangler, Kendall Phillips, Karen Tracy, Donal Carbaugh, Benjamin Bailey, Robin Shoaps, and Vern Cronen. Portions of this study were presented to the Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts, 2006, at the National Communication Association Convention, San Antonio, 2006, and at the International Communication Association Convention, San Francisco The final version of this paper benefited tremendously from detailed comments and criticisms from Barbara Johnstone and the two anonymous reviewers.

Mary J. Schleppegrell, The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. 190. Hb. $45.00

This is an important contribution to the discussion in the field of educational linguistics on the nature of academic language proficiency. The title itself evokes some of the questions in dispute: What aspects of “language” might the author have in mind? And is there really a different kind that could be said to be “of schooling?” Chap. 1 starts by delimiting the domain of school-related language ability that will be the object of scrutiny: advanced literacy. The skeptic may object that neither “school-related” (in relation to “language”) and “advanced” (in relation to “literacy”) are coherent, well-defined categories. In fact, some educators might go so far as to describe Schleppegrell's analysis as a type of “deficit model” of literacy, a characterization frequently directed toward attempts to differentiate between conversational ability and the kind of language ability required for advanced literacy (see Edelsky 1996). Cummins 2000, for example, has been strongly criticized along these lines.

Roxy Harris and Ben Rampton (eds.), The language, ethnicity and race reader. London & New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. x, 357. Pb $38.98.

Harris & Rampton's collection of 25 classic and current articles on language and ethnicity is a welcome tool for the undergraduate-level instructor who requires an astute collection with diverse theoretical and historical perspectives. The introduction guides teachers and students toward theoretical implications of the articles and offers a number of organizational suggestions for how to “read.” The book is first organized into three sections: “Colonialism, imperialism, and global process,” “Nation states and minorities,” and “Language discourse and ethnic style.” In turn, each of the sections proceeds historically along a continuum: premodern → modern → postmodern. For pedagogical purposes, the editors supply a table locating each of the excerpts in its place along this continuum – “a gross oversimplification” to spark debate, for which they hope the readers will take them to task (p. 6).

David McNeill, Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. xii, 318. Hb $38.00.

I am a visual and tactile learner myself, and so David McNeill's latest work, Gesture and thought, makes bone deep (or perhaps, following McNeill, brain deep) sense to me. His main argument is that language and gesture are inextricably entwined. He sees “gestures as active participants in speaking and thinking. They are conceived of as ingredients in an imagery-language dialect that fuels speech and thought” (p. 3). He looks closely at how gesture and speech coexist in narrative, presents transcription methods suitable to capturing their interdependence, and, perhaps most importantly, lays out the intellectual framework for why a dynamic, double vision of language is essential to understanding the nature of interactions.

Robert D. Greenberg, Language and identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its disintegration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 188.

This book is an important contribution to the field of Serbo-Croatian and Balkan studies, as well as to general sociolinguistics. In a world that is reconfiguring its identities quite drastically, Greenberg targets one of the most complex, sensitive, and politically charged areas, that of the former Yugoslavia. The whole book attends closely to the unfolding drama of a people whose linguistic fate has followed various controversial attempts to keep the Serbo-Croatian language united, ultimately leading to its disintegration and the emergence of the languages of the relatively recently established new national entities. These are the outcome of the breakup of Yugoslavia: Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (not to mention the predominantly non-Slavic-speaking ethno-geographical units).

Leonie Cornips and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. vi, 312. Hb $144.00.

Cornips & Corrigan's Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social presupposes that we have a biological and a social dimension to linguistics, that the biological dimension is represented by generative syntax, and that the two dimensions require reconciliation. Cornips & Corrigan (C&C) consider this reconciliation possibly to be “the initial phase in the creation of a mature scientific community” (p. 2). These presuppositions should be questioned. In the first place, it is questionable whether linguistics really has a biological dimension, at least if generative syntax is that dimension. Second, it is far from clear that reconciliation is necessary for linguistics to be considered a mature science.

Roger W. Shuy, Creating language crimes: How law enforcement uses (and misuses) language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv, 194. Hb $29.95.

Legal process, whether civil or criminal, depends heavily on the medium of language. It is the glue that runs through all of legal process, the medium of all interactive communication prior to, during, and after trial process. In criminal law, it is also the spoken medium of police investigations, prisons, and consultations among lawyers and between lawyers and their clients. It is also the medium through which the innocent are sometimes convicted of crimes that they did not, in fact, commit. Creating language crimes explores the use of conversational strategies by cooperating witnesses, by law enforcement officers, and as trial evidence in a book that will serve to introduce many to the goals and methods of forensic linguistics in the criminal context, as well as to the specific conversational strategies sometimes used to convict innocent individuals.

Glenn Martínez, Mexican Americans and language/Del dicho al hecho! Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2006. ix, 128 pp. Pb. $15.95.

This slender volume is offered as an introductory text on this topic, presumably to university undergraduates. In the Introduction, Martínez states: “Mexican Americans and language offers a linguistic overview of some of the central issues in the Mexican American language experience [emphasis in original], giving students the background needed to respond to the multiple social problems that interface with the language differences that exist in the Mexican American minority population” (p. ix). The goals of the book thus explained, in the final paragraph of the Introduction the author reveals the conversational style that he will take for the rest of the chapters, using second person for the reader and first person for the author: “After reading this book I hope you will be able to bridge the gap between el dicho (saying) and el hecho (doing) and will be able to look at the Mexican American language experience in a way that will encourage you to seek out change and improvement for the Mexican American communities that exist throughout the United States” (xi). On the face of it, this style may intend to make the academic content to follow less intimidating to students unused to reading challenging texts and academic jargon. However, it also makes for a very personalized approach to the issues that he addresses, a type of “critical discourse” in effect, in which his interpretation of the research presented appears not to be open to dissension or debate.

Terrence G. Wiley, Literacy and language diversity in the United States. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 2005. Pp. x, 267. Pb $19.95.

Literacy and language diversity in the United States (henceforth, Literacy) combines perspectives from diverse linguistic disciplines, primarily studies of English as a second/foreign language (EFL) and English dialectology. Literacy investigates challenges faced by “language minorities” (people who speak as a first or only language a language other than English, and those who speak vernacular English dialects) in schools and communities, and the pedagogical and societal implications of these challenges. The primary focus is summarized in the introductory chapter: Literacy “explores the major issues that scholars and educators face concerning fair and effective educational policies and practices for language minority learners” (p. 4). Chap. 1 surveys several of these issues, including defining and measuring literacy; ideological beliefs about and attitudes toward literacy; and the political, social, and educational implications of such ideologies.

Edward Finegan & John R. Rickford (eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii, 502. Hb $85.00.

Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century, edited by Edward Finegan and John R. Rickford, consists of 26 articles commissioned from prominent language scholars. The collection offers brief chapters covering a wide variety of issues relevant to the sociolinguistic situation of the 21st-century United States. The chapters are organized into three sections: Part 1, “American English,” Part 2, “Other language varieties,” and Part 3, “The sociolinguistic situation.” The editors hope that the volume's “perspectives will launch inquiries into the topics of interest among student readers, policy makers, and the educated public” (p. xviii). The primary intended audience seems to be undergraduate students who have some background in linguistics. However, despite some use of IPA and a small amount of field-specific terminology, the editors and contributors have created a volume that is accessible to a wider audience that includes the general public.

Uta M. Quasthoff & Tabea Becker (eds.), Narrative interaction. (Studies in Narrative, 5.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. v, 305. Hb $126.

This edited volume, the fifth in the Studies in Narrative series published by John Benjamins, brings together international studies conducted on spoken narratives in everyday and institutional settings, and in several languages (English, German, Greek, Italian, and Hungarian). The collection is united by a focus on the interactive nature of narrative in context. Following an introduction by the co-editors, there are eleven chapters organized into three parts concentrating on (I) narrative development, (II) the co-construction of narrative, and (III) narrative retellings.

Robin Lakoff and Sachiko Ide (eds.), Broadening the horizon of linguistic politeness. Amsterdam & Philadelphia :John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. 342. Hb $144.

The essays in this collection were first presented at a conference held in Bangkok in 1999. The strength of the essays as a whole is that they concentrate on analyzing politeness in a range of different languages: Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Greek, Australian English, Spanish, Irish, and Swedish.

Arthur Hughes, Peter Trudgill and Dominic Watt, English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. 4th ed. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005. Pp. xiii, 159. Pb and accompanying CD £24.99.

English accents and dialects has been the standard introductory textbook on varieties of English in the British Isles since it first appeared in 1979. It is well known and widely used as the only compact and affordable textbook providing detailed descriptions of a range of accents and dialects, as well as introductory chapters dealing with issues of social and regional variation and change. Although successive editions have expanded the range of varieties included and updated references, this fourth edition has undergone a more thorough overhaul, with a new co-author on board in the sociophonetician Dominic Watt. The new edition is accompanied by a digitally remastered CD with recordings of the transcribed interviews and word lists, and it includes new sections on the varieties spoken in Aberdeen, Galway, and “Leicester,” along with exercises on these.

Jake Harwood and Howard Giles (eds.), Intergroup communication: Multiple perspectives. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Pp. viii, 277. Pb $29.95.

Social psychologists have long been concerned with the ways in which group categories operate in the organization of social life, but communication scholars have been slower to examine such intergroup processes. Editors Jake Harwood and Howard Giles present a pioneering collection on intergroup communication, which, they argue, deserves to stand on its own as a distinct research area. It is notable that while this volume examines intergroup issues, this endeavor is – in and of itself – intergroup in nature, bringing together the fields of social psychology and communication. Covering an impressive breadth of social groups and contexts, the chapters in this collection draw heavily on social identity theory (SIT) in the study of intergroup communication. Linguistic anthropologists and qualitative sociolinguists investigate many of the same issues covered in this volume – most notably culture, gender, sexuality, and multilingualism – with vastly different theoretical models and methodological tools. Still, this book should appeal to all types of scholars who may be at the very least curious about how theoretical trends in social psychology and communication might inform shared areas of concern, despite what may be irreconcilable ontological differences.

Roy Harris, The semantics of science. London: Continuum International, 2005. Pp. xvi, 240. Hb $149.00, Pb $49.00

At least back to The language myth (1981), Roy Harris (not related to this reviewer) has plied variations of the same salvationist argument, in his customarily grumpy and entertaining style. If you're familiar with this argument, leap ahead to the third paragraph; if not, a quick synopsis, both of the errors he wants to save us from and of the salve he wants us to buy, will best place The semantics of science for you.

Nils Langer and Winifred Davies (eds.), Linguistic purism in the Germanic languages. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. viii, 374. Hb $137.00

Prescriptivist attitudes toward language have always been with us, and complaints about decline and decay, about foreign infiltration, about the inadequacy of certain dialects – these matters are as perennial as misgivings about the younger generation. Within the scholarly community, there is a long tradition of studying language attitudes, supplemented recently by a revived interest in “folk linguistics” and “perceptual dialectology.” This sort of attention has generally coincided with arguments against prescriptivist intervention, on the grounds that it is neither appropriate nor feasible to attempt to direct vernacular usage. (Hohenhaus, however, in his chapter on computer communication patterns, points out that a refusal to intervene is, itself, a sort of “reverse purism.”) Historically, of course, matters were rather different in intellectual and policy circles and, indeed, prescriptivist intervention remains common: Decisions have to be made when national languages “emerge” and when some print standardization is found necessary; debates about identity choice and maintenance are often argued in linguistic arenas; language-planning exercises involve some degree of control; and contemporary debate about what (if anything) ought to be done on behalf of “endangered” varieties also implies a prescriptivist attitude. As Kristine Horner points out in her chapter on Luxembourg, labels can often confuse in such broad areas of activity: What is seen as purism when directed toward “foreign” elements may be tagged as standardization when the focus is inward. In a broad sense, then, there is a great deal of information in the literature about prescriptivist attitudes and activities; when the editors suggest that “only one monograph” (by George Thomas) has so far attempted to theorize about purism, they are being a little too restrictive.

Sol Steinmetz and Barbara Ann Kipfer, The life of language: The fascinating ways words are born, live, and die. New York: Random House, 2006. Pp. xii, 388. Pb $16.95

In 1862, Max Müller published the first of his two volumes on The Science of Language, lectures delivered at the Royal Institution the previous year. The books are among the very earliest examples of “popular” discussions of important linguistic issues, and no doubt the first by a distinguished scholar. They set a standard that has been very frequently emulated, but very rarely equaled. We see in our own time an avalanche of popular books on language, all aimed at a broad and continuing interest that is hardly surprising in a subject of such immediate and ubiquitous presence. Of course, the quality varies immensely. There are basic problems even with the best of them, and the most basic of all are the reconciliation of an appealing scope with a reasonable amount of depth and, relatedly, the provision of some thematic continuity in treatments typically composed of a large number of entries. The most common results, then, are books that are something like dictionaries, something like encyclopedias and, often, something like cabinets of curiosities.