430
switching, and the legitimacy of the nonnative
speaker as a teacher of another language.
Chapter 7, “I Lasted One Day And Then I Was
Gone: Performing Legitimacy,” describes the am-
bivalence of what is a “legitimate language” and
who is a “legitimate speaker,” how teachers’ legiti-
macy is questioned, how teachers show insecurity
the first day of teaching, and how a teacher’s
legitimacy may be questioned because of his or
her skin color. The teachers acquire linguistic
capital, but “they are held against an idealized
U.S. English ‘native speaker’ casting them as the
racial and linguistic OTHER” (p. 165).
Chapter 8, “Conclusions: (Re)legitimizing
Through Tensions and Ambiguities,” reviews
and summarizes the main issues discussed in the
previous chapters. It closes with an epilogue that
brings readers up to date with the activities of the
three teachers.
In the appendix, Sayer provides a detailed
description of his ethnographic fieldwork. In his
words, he prefers to describe data collection as
“data (co)construction” or “data co-fabrication”
because the original “is an unfortunate term that
suggests that the data, here the insiders’ perspec-
tives and indigenous meanings, were lying about
to be dug up and gathered like turnips by the
ethnographer, and sorted into conceptual bas-
kets” (p. 224). In this chapter, Sayer describes his
field notes, classroom observations, ethnographic
interviews, and the issues he faced during the
fieldwork. He also details his coding and analysis
processes during and after his fieldwork. This
chapter is important enough that it should have
been presented at the beginning of the book, not
at the end. It would be a mistake to interpret it as
an afterthought, however, because for fieldwork,
it is essential to define the steps taken to make
sense of the material analyzed.
MICHELLE F. RAMOS PELLICIA
California State University
San Marcos
SPANISH
DÍAZ–CAMPOS, MANUEL. Introducción a la so-
ciolingüística hispánica. Malden, MA: Wiley, 2014.
Pp. 321. $49.95, paper. ISBN 978–0–47065–802–
4. $99.95, cloth. ISBN 978–0–47065–798–0.
This textbook provides a comprehensive intro-
duction to the study of Spanish sociolinguistics.
It highlights theoretical discussions while pre-
The Modern Language Journal 99 (2015)
senting linguistic data from the Spanish-speaking
world and addressing methodological and prac-
tical considerations related to sociolinguistic
research. This compilation of 11 chapters not
only fulfills the field’s need for an updated
Spanish sociolinguistics textbook, but it also
offers pedagogically motivated comprehension
questions, vocabulary activities, and research
topics for students to explore. This text, written
in Spanish, represents an exceptional book to
guide advanced undergraduate students who
have some exposure to linguistics or Spanish
linguistics graduate students in their study of
sociolinguistics.
Chapter 1 serves to define sociolinguistics as
the study of language within its social context
and to identify language as carrying social value
and indicating identity. A goal of sociolinguistics
is to analyze linguistic variation at the individual
and community levels. This introductory chapter
clearly defines terms, such as variant and di-
alectology, explains how sociolinguistic research
is conducted, and introduces the theoretical
importance of studying language variation as it
relates to language change.
The next section of the book (Chapters 2–6)
presents a variationist approach to sociolinguis-
tics that is quantitative in nature. Chapter 2
teaches about some of the major social categories
that affect language variation (e.g., age, gender,
socioeconomic status). It does a particularly good
job of addressing important theoretical ideas like
apparent time, the notion of prestige, factors
that explain women’s linguistic conservatism and
their innovation, and the s-curve pattern that is a
characteristic of linguistic change.
Chapters 3 and 4 collectively address phonetic
variation as a natural phenomenon in everyday
speech. Chapter 3 reminds readers about basic
concepts (e.g., social and stylistic variation),
which is helpful in an introductory text. It also
presents Labov’s initial investigations of phonetic
variation and his methodological advances, a nec-
essary component of an introductory sociolinguis-
tics textbook. Related to research methods, the
author mentions the importance of recordings
and the use of sociolinguistic interviews. Finally,
examples of Spanish phonetic variation carefully
demonstrate how phonetic, grammatical, and
social contexts can explain phonetic variation.
With the foundational understanding of pho-
netic variation from Chapter 3, readers find a
quite comprehensive description of phonetic
variables commonly studied in the Spanish-
speaking world in Chapter 4. To benefit most
from Chapters 3 and 4, readers should have basic
Reviews
knowledge of phonetics. Furthermore, despite
the description of Varbrul/Goldvarb-like analyses
in the text, students may need additional infor-
mation about these types of analyses and how to
interpret the results.
Related to morphosyntactic variation, Chapters
5 and 6 follow the same structure as the previous
two chapters. The chapters define morphosyn-
tactic variation, describe useful methodological
approaches, and provide descriptions of inves-
tigations that have addressed morphological,
morphosyntactic, and syntactic variables. The
studies shared exemplify both grammatical and
social contexts as conditioning factors of variants
and both diachronic and synchronic investi-
gations. Furthermore, Chapter 5 contributes
practical and theoretical issues and informs
readers of various corpora useful for investiga-
tions. Chapter 6 provides additional description
of morphosyntactic variation that exists in the
Spanish-speaking world, relating to subject ex-
pression, forms of address, and pluralization
of haber, among others. These chapters, like all
others, end with valuable activities for students to
practice new terms and concepts.
The remaining chapters (Chapters 7–11)
branch off from a variationist approach to address
other topics within Spanish sociolinguistics. Chap-
ter 7 defines language contact, offers many exam-
ples of Spanish in contact with other languages,
and mentions the utility of studying language con-
tact for linguistic means. This chapter introduces
the socio-historical context of Latin America
as a place with a large variety of indigenous
languages, both currently and historically (e.g.,
Guarani, Quechua, Nahuatl), and a place where
Spanish conquistadores arrived and thus created
new situations of language contact. The chapter
also explores Spanish in contact with African lan-
guages and describes terms like pidgin and creole.
Whereas Chapter 7 focuses on language
contact in Latin America, Chapter 8 addresses
language contact from a new perspective, that
of bilingualism in the United States. Chapter 8
shows the large and growing number of Spanish
speakers in the United States and the geographic
distribution of those speakers. Readers learn
about important concepts like diglossia, the
impact of generational membership on language
use and maintenance, and code-switching. Also
related to Spanish in the United States, Chapter
9 introduces the concept of Spanish as a heritage
language. As the study of heritage languages is an
emergent research topic, its inclusion represents
an important contribution to this textbook. Yet
the emphasis on educational decisions related
431
to Spanish as a heritage language is a topic that
is not as cohesively tied to the broader ideas of
sociolinguistics as topics in the other chapters.
The final two chapters represent areas of
research commonly included in introductory
sociolinguistic texts. Chapter 10 addresses lan-
guage attitudes and identity. Attitude studies may
address attitudes toward particular variants of
a linguistic variable or a language as a whole.
These types of investigations lead to increased
knowledge about the social value of languages,
language varieties, or linguistic variables. This
chapter touches on the topic of identity, and also
introduces linguistic anthropology perspectives
that critically examine societal level language atti-
tudes. Chapter 11 addresses language and policy,
including forensic linguistics, linguistic expertise
applied as legal evidence, Spanish in the legal
system of the United States, and implications of
linguistic barriers related to the legal system. This
chapter is an excellent reminder that linguistic
systems and their study in social settings, like the
legal arena, can affect the larger population.
Overall, this is an excellent textbook for
the study of sociolinguistics and responds to a
clear need for an updated introductory Spanish
sociolinguistics textbook. It succeeds in commu-
nicating that sociolinguistic variation is a natural
occurrence in language and that sociolinguistic
investigations contribute to the understanding of
linguistic processes and theories. The textbook
contains plenty of examples, methodological
details, and theoretical discussions to teach stu-
dents about sociolinguistic concepts and also
to incite critical thinking about future Spanish
sociolinguistic research.
LORI CZERWIONKA
Purdue University
TESTING
GREEN, ANTHONY. Exploring Language Assess-
ment and Testing: Language in Action. New York,
NY: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 272. $44.95, cloth. ISBN
978–0–41559–724–1.
In 2015, Language Testing is publishing its 32nd
volume, the International Language Testing Asso-
ciation (ILTA) is 23 years old, and the Language
Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) hosted
its 37th conference in Toronto in March. By
all accounts, language testing and assessment
has become an established subfield of applied