Book Reviews

147

    Larsen-Freeman  ,   D   . ( 2007 ).  Refl ecting on the cognitive-social debate in second language 

acquisition .  Modern Language Journal ,  91 ,  773 – 787 . 

    McDonough  ,   S. H   . ( 1995 ).  Strategy and skill in learning a foreign language .  London :  Arnold . 
    Tseng  ,   W.-T.  ,   Dörnyei  ,   Z.  , &   Schmitt  ,   N   . ( 2006 ).  A new approach to assessing strategic 

learning: The case of self-regulation in vocabulary acquisition .  Applied Linguistics , 
 27 ,  78 – 102 . 

   ( Received  12   April   2009  )  

    Luke     Plonsky       

   Michigan State University  

          doi:10.1017/S0272263109990325  

        BILINGUALISM AND IDENTITY: SPANISH AT THE CROSSROADS 
WITH OTHER LANGUAGES .    Mercedes     Niño-Murcia   and   Jason    
 Rothman     (Eds.).   Amsterdam :  Benjamins ,  2008 . Pp.  vii  + 365.  

       In recent years, learner identity has emerged as a central concern in SLA research 
conducted from sociocultural and poststructural perspectives (e.g., Norton, 
 2000 ; Pavlenko & Lantolf,  2000 ). This volume, although not expressly concerned 
with SLA, has much to offer those interested in exploring the complex interrela-
tionship between language and identity and its impact on acquisition, mainte-
nance, or loss of second and heritage languages. Taking a social approach to the 
phenomenon of bilingualism, the studies collected here illuminate the processes 
through which associations between language use and ethnolinguistic identity 
are constructed in multilingual societies. 

 The thread that unifi es an otherwise eclectic collection is the focus on Spanish 

in contact with other languages in Spain (where it exists alongside Basque, Galician, 
and Catalan), Latin America (where it is the dominant language), and the United 
States (where it is subordinate to English). Utilizing a variety of methodologies 
(e.g., surveys, interviews, elicitation of oral and written data, life-history narra-
tives, and recordings of naturally occurring talk), these studies explore topics 
ranging from shifting attitudes toward language and citizenship in the Basque 
Country (Azurmendi, Larrañaga, and Apalategi) and Catalonia (Boix-Fuster and 
Sanz) to the Spanish spoken by so-called MexiRicans (individuals with a Mexican 
mother and a Puerto Rican father) in Chicago. Among the contributions, several 
stand out as relevant for SLA scholars. Two studies that draw on interviews 
with high school students in Galicia (Loureiro-Rodriguez) and Spanish heritage 
university students in the United States (Urciuoli) explore how tensions 
between standard language varieties promoted in schools and the varieties 
spoken by students at home impact evaluations of language use, with potential 
implications for language maintenance. The effect of nonnative varieties on 
identity is taken up in Sánchez’s study of the written Spanish of Quechua-speaking 
children and Boix-Fuster and Sanz’s analysis of the Catalan of Spanish-speaking 
immigrants to Catalonia, both of which consider how nonnative features may 
mark users as outsiders. Shenk’s study of Spanish heritage children in a dual-
immersion program in Iowa reveals the children’s tendency to speak English even 
during Spanish activities and identifi es family language ideologies that promote 
Spanish cultural and linguistic identity as a factor in increasing children’s Spanish 

Book Reviews

148

use in the classroom. Finally, Rothman and Niño-Murcia’s account of three boys 
growing up in a trilingual (Spanish, Italian, and English) household in California 
provides an intriguing account of how linguistic choices are shaped by children’s 
developing multilingual and multicultural identities. 

 A potential source of confusion is the vague and inconsistent uses of the term 

 identity  both within and across these studies. Some researchers use the term to 
refer to how individuals identify themselves and how this self-identifi cation 
shapes or is shaped by language choice (e.g., Bustamante-López), whereas 
others use it to refer to how certain linguistic features serve as a means for 
others to identify the users as, for example, so-called Haitianized (i.e., black and 
poor) speakers of Dominican Spanish (Bullock and Toribio). Moreover, although 
the introductory chapters (Zentella; Niño-Murcia and Rothman) emphasize the 
dynamic and performative nature of identity, this theme is taken up directly in 
only a handful of studies, and, with a few exceptions (e.g., Zavala and Bariola; 
Rothman and Niño-Murcia), transcripts of naturally occurring talk are not included. 
This absence is particularly felt in studies such as Shenk’s, in which the children’s 
use of Spanish in the classroom is noted but never actually shown. The interviews 
that constitute the primary data source for many studies are usually analyzed 
in terms of expressed attitudes toward a language or explicit self-identifi cation 
rather than as performances of identity in and of themselves. In other words, 
the focus is more on how bilinguals perceive and talk about identity rather than 
on performance of identity as such. 

 Despite that caveat, this volume can be commended for its wide-ranging and 

thoughtful examination of crucial issues such as attitudes toward nonnative, 
nonstandard, or contact language varieties that have relevance beyond the 
Spanish-speaking world. As such, it makes a worthy contribution to the growing 
body of literature on bilingualism, language learning, and identity.     

 REFERENCES 

    Norton  ,   B   . ( 2000 ).  Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational change . 

 London :  Longman . 

    Pavlenko  ,   A.  , &   Lantolf  ,   J. P   . ( 2000 ).  Second language learning as participation and the (re)

construction of selves . In    J. P.     Lantolf    (Ed.),  Sociocultural theory and second language 
learning  (pp.  155 – 177 ).  Oxford :  Oxford University Press . 

   ( Received  30   April   2009  )  

    Debra A.     Friedman       

   Michigan State University  

          doi:10.1017/S0272263109990337  

        LINKING UP CONTRASTIVE AND LEARNER CORPUS RESEARCH . 
   Gaëtenelle     Gilquin  ,   Szilivia     Papp  , and   María Belén     Díez-Bedmar     (Eds.).  
 Amsterdam :  Rodopi ,  2008 . Pp.  xi  + 282.  

       This volume is a collection of conference papers on learner language from a 
learner corpus research perspective. Most learner corpus research relies on 
contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA). An extension of this model is Granger’s