Reviews 275 Languages took pride in belonging to the language groups but were no less Canadian for it. The final three chapters differ from the previous nine in both tone and topic. While Canada, and Quebec in particular, have been concerned with the language rights of the Anglophone and Francophone populations, they have not given the same consideration to the First Nations, that is, the Amerindians and Inuits. As a result of federal and provincial policies, many indigenous languages are severely threatened, and it is only recently that efforts have been made to save or revive these languages. Teaching these languages poses its own set of problems: a lack of qualified teachers, few appropriate materials, and little knowledge of how best to approach these issues. This volume is an excellent starting point for research in these four areas. Each chapter has a copious bibliography and neatly describes the issues at hand. The writing is clear; it avoids overwhelming the reader with statistics and jargon but remains scholarly. Anyone interested in different language issues in Canada would be well advised to start here. Arizona State University Helene Ossipov Bulot, Thierry, et Philippe Blanchet. Une introduction à la sociolinguistique: pour l’étude des dynamiques de la langue française dans le monde. Paris: Archives contemporaines, 2013. ISBN 978-2-8130-0085-9. Pp. 166. 28 a. This introduction to sociolinguistics through an examination of French as it is taught, acquired, perceived, and used throughout the world purports to be original in its dual approach (theoretical and empirical) and chapter organization (linear and modular). Indeed, these claims are warranted and result in some provocative and informative discussions. Nevertheless, the import of the book is seriously hindered by various shortcomings, perhaps the most basic of which is its lack of a clearly identified target readership, given its rudimentary explanations and examples at some points and complex theoretical passages in others. The authors highlight their use of case studies to help elucidate various key concepts and domains of sociolinguistic research. Unfortunately, both the use and the usefulness of these case studies and other empirical data are inconsistent across the chapters. The first case study presented is a series of excerpts from a transcribed interview with an immigrant couple that, in fact, the authors fabricated but claim is realistic inasmuch as the dialogue is inspired by actual corpora (9). They then proceed to analyze these invented interview passages from a sociolinguistic perspective, presumably to introduce sociolinguistic concepts to a neophyte readership more easily (even though fabricating interview data as a way of introducing a domain of study that eschews fabricated data is, at best, problematic). In a later chapter, however, there is a very interesting discussion of a (non-fabricated) quantitative and qualitative case study of perceived and objective varieties of the French spoken in Rouen. This topic is then followed by a section on the speech of French youth, which is discussed entirely from a theoretical perspective with no explanation for the absence of quantitative or qualitative data. Unevenness describes not just the incorporation and nature of empirical data in the book but also the writing style from chapter to chapter, with some sections conceptually and linguistically oriented to the specialist and others written as a true introduction to the topic. The mini-summary of the history of the French language and presentation and discussion of the use of French from an institutional and political perspective (ch. 4) offers, for example, a very clear and informative synthesis of various studies, even though the author does not address seemingly contradictory information presented from different sources. Information from one source (85) indicates that French is not one of the most commonly taught second languages in the United States, while a different source in a footnote (99) states that French is the third most commonly taught second language in the United States (after Spanish and Chinese). While inconsistencies in approach, writing style, and contextualization within the larger sociolinguistic sphere suggest that individual chapters were perhaps not originally designed to go together, each chapter does successfully demonstrate the potential social relevance of sociolinguistic research. The book also highlights the oftentimes enlightening and provocative role such research can play in uncovering...
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Jan 14, 2017
Daniel Schreier 
Open Access
