The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics ed. by Manel Lacorte

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics ed. by Manel Lacorte Alonso Abad Macheño Lacorte, Manel, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 700. ISBN 978-0-41581-378-5. The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics is a collection of articles that give an overview of current research fields in Hispanic applied linguistics. This book would be useful for graduate students and scholars specializing in Spanish Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Hispanic applied linguistics. It would give graduate students an overview of different fields being researched currently in Spanish SLA and applied linguistics because it covers a very wide range of topics and describes current research and history of the fields. It also covers sociocultural theory, service learning, cognitive and generative perspectives, and education and teaching applications (such as Spanish in the health professions, Spanish in special education, etc.). This handbook would also be very useful for teachers and college professors because it covers such topics as culture, civilization, and literatures throughout the curriculum, publishing, and discourse analysis. Finally, it would be also useful for administrators or anyone interested in language policies because there is a section that covers the social and political contexts of Spanish. The work is divided in five sections: perspectives on learning Spanish, Spanish teaching, Spanish in the professions, discourse analysis, and the social and political contexts of Spanish. The first section informs the reader about the theoretical contributions of Spanish SLA to different subfields and how those contributions have been applied to learning and teaching Spanish. Each chapter in the book is subdivided into three parts: a description of the subfield and its history, current issues being researched, and their application to Spanish learning, and the future and direction of the field. The first chapter explores the applications of sociocultural theory, and how [End Page 509] this theory is the genesis of a collaborative approach to teaching Spanish in the classroom, and a more holistic redefinition of linguistic competence that does not discriminate cultural and linguistic competence as two separate entities. Chapter 2 gives an overview of Hispanic pragmatics and discourse analysis. The third chapter is dedicated to the study of cognitive approaches to second language learning. It covers such issues as second language processing, attention and awareness, input processing, and neurocognitive approaches. The fourth chapter deals with the application of generative perspective to Spanish second language research. The core concepts of the chapter are the relationship between first language (L1) and second language (L2), and the role of input in SLA. The last chapter of the section addresses sociolinguistic approaches to Hispanic applied linguistics, ranging from bilingualism to classroom learners, study abroad language learners, immersion learners, heritage speakers, and immigrant bilinguals. Section 2 centers on issues and environments in Spanish teaching and teacher education. Chapter 7 offers an overview of the pedagogy of Spanish as a L2, centering on theoretical and methodological issues. The following chapters in this section deal with different aspects of methodological and curricular issues related to Spanish programs, both at the college level and the primary and secondary school level. They include curricular issues such as teacher education, Spanish as a heritage language, service learning, program articulation, content-based programs, the teaching of cultures and literatures throughout the curriculum, online teaching, the technological contexts for teaching Spanish, assessment of Spanish, and critical approaches to teaching Spanish. The third section offers a comprehensive survey of Spanish in the professions. It includes chapters on interpreting and translation, lexicography, computational Spanish, publishing, Spanish in the health professions, and special education. There is one chapter dedicated to forensic Spanish, or the intersection between Spanish and law, in which issues such as the alteration of pragmatic meaning by interpreters in court appearances, and other judicial proceedings, are discussed. The fourth section of the book is dedicated to the discourses of Spanish: such topics as academic Spanish, media discourse, commercial discourse, intercultural communication discourse, and politics and discourse are covered in this section. The chapters in this section define the scope, history and tenets of each discourse. For instance, the chapter dedicated to intercultural communication discourse offers an overview of the field through the lens of...