This volume consists of a collection of 13 papers from the 23rd International L.A.U.D.conference on “The Cultural Context in Communication Across Languages” held atthe University of Duisburg, Germany, in March, 1997. The conference was concerned with twodifferent aspects of cross-cultural communication: business communication and the culturaldimension of foreign language teaching. The papers dealing with this second aspect are collectedin the present volume.

This volume contains 10 original chapters reflecting research and discussion on the issue offocus on form (FonF) in second language instruction. As the editors point out in the preface, it istimely now to discuss and clarify terminology and research issues in FonF studies, mainlybecause of the diversity of reactions to this construct. The central aim of the chapters is toexplore the nature and feasibility of FonF and their intended audience is second languageacquisition (SLA) researchers and language teaching practitioners, as well as graduate students inthe field of applied linguistics.

The phenomenon of styleswitching has been important in the study of L1 and L2 languageuse. Labov's early studies correlated formal style with attention paid to speech, a notionechoed in Krashen's monitor model. Giles' accommodation theory and Bell'saudience design theory claim that speakers styleswitch in order to accommodate to the speech oftheir audience. Several SLA scholars have found evidence for accommodation in L2 speech aswell. Such correlational studies have been criticized for lacking a clear foundation in cognitivetheory. In this volume Myers-Scotton describes her Markedness Model (MM), which groundsstyleswitching (including codeswitching) in the cognitive theory of somatic markers (Damasio,1994). Because speech styles are distinguished mainly by the frequency at which certain features(such as dropping a consonant from a cluster) appear, variationists have sought to identify acognitive mechanism that could account for the apparent fine-tuning of feature frequencies.However, it is not clear from the discussion in this volume whether the somatic markerhypothesis provides such a mechanism.

This book, which focuses on the Lowland Scots variety of English spoken in Glasgow, is awelcome addition to the John Benjamins series “Varieties of English Around theWorld.” Macaulay brings together work based on data collected in threedecades—the '70s, '80s, and '90s. The 12 chapters thus representseveral strands of research, all centered on the basic theme of language standards and variation.Macaulay argues that the “view of the inherent superiority of standardized varieties ismisleading and that allvarieties of language persist because they are functional fortheir speakers” (p. 5).

More than 75 years ago, at the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress, L. S.Vygotsky presented a paper, “Methods of Reflexological and PsychologicalInvestigations,” in which he began to lay the foundation for a unified theory of mind.Vygotsky's concern was that psychology had lost sight of the uniqueness of human mentalfunctioning, which for him resides in our ability to intentionally mediate, and hence regulate, ourbiologically specified mental systems (i.e., in today's jargon, input systems)through culturally determined means. Contemporary sociocultural psychologists, J. V. Wertschin particular, have noted that, although Vygotsky called for the unification of psychology, in hiswritings, he actually paid very little attention to one part of the mental equation—thebiological, or natural, mind. As it turns out, even those who fault Vygotsky for his failure herehave themselves not focused much attention on the contribution of the natural, or what Frawleyrefers to as the computational, mind, preferring instead to concentrate on the socioculturalparameters of cognition. The present book can be seen as an attempt to bring to fruitionVygotsky's earlier vision of a unified psychology.

Scholars in the multidisciplinary fields of language studies will benefit from acquiringLanguage and Its Normal Processingby Vivien Tartter. The volume, which functionswell as a textbook or reference book, contains chapters incorporating basic concepts, themes,trends, and controversies in psycholinguistics. One of the author's principal interests inwriting the book (and for us to read the book) is to “communicate the fun and excitement .. . in psycholinguistic research” (p. xv). The author successfully synthesizes research on avariety of topics: meaning and meaning processing; syntax and sentence processing; speech andits perception and production; as well as presentations on sociolinguistics; first and secondlanguage acquisition, and multilingualism; and the psychology of reading and writing printedtext.

The goal of this volume is to provide a rich, interdisciplinary foundation of empirical studiesdescribing the discourse of Language Proficiency Interviews (LPIs), focusing on“interactional competence.” The studies not only show how difficult it is to validlyassess oral proficiency; they also show that discourse analysis of LPIs—as the editors pointout—is very much in its infancy. Most of these studies face research design challenges(e.g., small sample size, sample comparability, coding reliability, or a combination of these), yetthey illustrate the potential contributions of various (mostly qualitative) discourse analyticapproaches to an understanding and assessment of oral proficiency.

This book is an outstanding contribution to the literature on language policy, languageplanning, and language rights. It provides a fascinating comparative treatment of developmentsrelated to issues of language and politics in the United States and Canada. Divided into fivesections, the book includes chapters that present broad overviews of the demographic and policysituations in the two nations, chapters on indigenous languages in North America, chapters onthe legal implications of official language policies, chapters on educational issues related tolanguage policies, and finally, chapters addressing issues of language services and languagerights.

This book is intended for teachers of children whose first language is not English and whoare in mainstream classes in an English-speaking country. It has a strong orientation towardGreat Britain.

Teachers will find this book useful both for self-study and teaching. The linguist-authorsintroduce nonspecialist readers to the rich landscape of local and parochial ways of speaking thatstill exist in the United States, despite the uniforming pressures from the language of the nationalmedia and leveling effects on language of individual mobility. They account for linguistic factsof differences between dialects (in chapters 1 and 2 and the appendix) and also between differentdiscourse styles (chapter 3). They do this with respect for differences between people. A majorpurpose of the book is to counter misconceptions that dialect speakers are somehow deficient.They are not, of course. They are anchored in the local community or group, and this localgrounding is socially-psychologically sound and represents a very positive value indeed; or fromanother neutral perspective, they simply talk differently. Dialects are good or different, but neverbad, unless people think others are bad just because they talk differently. The book helps anyreader shed such groundless prejudice.

According to the editors of this volume, models and theories of linguistic analysis that arebased on a study of monolingual societies are no longer appropriate for our contemporary world.Fueled by an interest in examining “multilingual and pluricultural societies wherelearning more than one language and accommodating multiple identities is a way of life”(p. 17), they have collected 11 papers as well as an introductory essay that analyze secondlanguage learning in a range of interesting multicultural settings. For example, there are paperson the acquisition of Hindi by Tamils in Delhi, English and German by Indian undergraduates atthe University of Delhi, and English by immigrants from six different countries in Britain.

This updated version of Cruttenden's popular first edition (1986, reprinted in 1989,1991, 1994, & 1995) focuses on British English but also discusses other varieties ofEnglish, comparative intonation, universals, and L1 acquisition. Much of the work is unchangedfrom the original, yet this edition includes a significant update to the literature.

Elizabeth Coelho's Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Schools(TLMS) is a very good book for its kind. Its primary audience is teachers at the primary and secondary level of schools in situations of cultural pluralism, the “multicultural” of the title. Schools are actually rarely multicultural, even if their students represent different cultures in contact, but rather serve as the major instrument of acculturation and assimilation into the dominant ideology. TLMSattempts to counteract this tendency by a valiant attempt of an “account of what is required to teach and learn effectively in multicultural schools” (p. x)! Coelho's ultimate goal is using the schools as agents for change in society, affirming the richness and stimulation to be found in cultural diversity.

From time to time, the annual Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) publishes itspapers. Kunnan, his contributors, and Erlbaum are to be commended for a rich, well edited, andthematically unified offering. Some wise decisions were made: author-provided abstracts,references following each paper, author-provided annotated bibliographies, and a rich index. Thisis more than a collection of conference papers. It is a book in its own right with the potential tobecome a textbook on language test validation.

The acquisition of Native American languages is an area of study in which there is still muchwork to be done, and this is especially true of Inuit languages. That alone makes ShanleyAllen's Aspects of argument structure acquisition in Inuktitut a welcomeaddition to the list of publications on first language learning. The book is not, however, strictlyintended for those who study Native American language acquisition. The extensive backgroundinformation provided, both theoretical and methodological, makes Allen's work accessibleto linguists with various interests. Furthermore, although her analysis is based largely onprinciples and parameters theory, she deliberately makes her research amenable to a variety oftheoretical frameworks.

For the last decade, college campuses across the United States have witnessed an influx ofU.S.-educated nonnative speakers of English. Many of these students come to postsecondaryinstitutions with almost nativelike communicative competence yet marginal literacy skills. Thismismatch in proficiency has proved to be a daunting challenge to ESL and composition faculty.Furthermore, few researchers have examined the linguistic needs of this population, creating agap in our knowledge of how best to intervene with these students. Generation 1.5 MeetsCollege Composition: Issues in the Teaching of Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESLis one of the first attempts to fill that void. This noteworthy volume brings together the current research on U.S.-educated learners of ESL, or Generation 1.5, a reference to U.S.-educated immigrant students who are caught somewhere between the cultural and linguistic experiences of the first and second generations.

In his introduction, Campbell makes a case for the broader relevance of historical linguisticsby noting that observing what does and does not change in language contributes to “theunderstanding of universal grammar, language typology, and human cognition in general”(p. 2). The generativist perspective that phonological and syntactic changes are linked tolanguage acquisition, cited on page 236, illustrates one interface between historical linguisticsand general linguistic theory.

This volume is a valuable contribution to the field of language teacher education (LTE)because of its innovative approach to language learning and teaching as well as its consistentorganization. As noted in the introduction, the book is intended for language teachers“who will make, or have made, the step from teaching to training” (p. 1). To thisend, the author relates the teachers' experience and understanding of the classroom contextto a broadly social constructivist perspective, based on the relevance of the personal and socialdimensions of learning to teach.

Traditionally, the study of the social dimensions of interpersonal communication has beenseparated from the study of the cognitive dimensions. Recent research efforts from both socialand cognitive psychology, however, have made apparent the value of integrating both approachesfor increasing our understanding of language use. The volume by Fussell and Kreuz is anexcellent illustration of these efforts.

As indicated by the title of this volume, this collection of public speeches, conferencepresentations, and practical tips for the elementary foreign language classroom truly celebratesthe vibrancy and mission exhibited by many teachers of foreign languages at the elementarylevel. The designation FLES* (pronounced “flestar”) has been created by Liptonas an “overall term for all types of elementary school foreign language programs”(p. 1), including sequential FLES (Foreign Language in the Elementary School), FLEX (ForeignLanguage Exploratory), and Immersion. According to Lipton, the term “sequentialFLES” subsumes the model usually referred to as FLES.