Linguistics
 Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Lynne Cameron forms part of the Oxford Applied Linguistics series. However, you don’t need a great deal of prior knowledge of Applied Linguistics to read this book, as the main focus is on the complex systems part of the title. For that reason, it may be that some background in science would be helpful. Alternatively, a scientific background may have you throwing this book against the wall, for reasons explained below.
Complexity theory tells us that the behaviour of certain systems, known as “complex systems”, cannot be predicted because unmeasurably tiny changes now lead to completely different results later. This concept is best grasped using an analogy with a pile of sand. If you keep adding grains of sand to the pile, an avalanche is sure to happen, but it’s impossible to predict when, and in which direction, and how much sand will fall. All we can do is look back, and offer a retrospective account of what happened: the pile collapsed after adding such-and-such a grain, and fell in such-and-such a way, something that doesn’t allow us to predict similar events in the future because that “…depends on the day of the week… the time of day…” and a thousand other interconnected and uncontrollable factors (p235). It doesn’t take much scientific knowledge to realise that this runs contrary to the conventional picture of science that most of us learnt at school, with its regularly moving pendulums and models of the solar system. Complexity theory has been heralded by some as a paradigm shift, one that could revolutionise areas outside the natural sciences like economics, education and business. However, others believe that when it is exported to those other areas it usually becomes pseudo-science at best (hence the potential for angry scientists).
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 The Lexicography of English The author of this book, Henri Béjoint, believes that English dictionaries can serve as a valid example of the evolution of lexicography from the seventeenth century to the present day. His interest in dictionaries is a life-long passion, one which is probably shared by many people. The statistics he provides in the introduction date a little: 90% of households in Britain possessed at least one dictionary in 1985; 87% of households in America owned a dictionary in 1989. This time-lag could be explained by the fact that the earlier, shorter version of this book was first published in 1994. It is probable that in the twenty-first century more and more people will be turning to online dictionaries or CD-ROMS, but dictionaries are rarely discarded unless they are worn out through over-use.
This is quite a lengthy volume, divided into ten chapters of unequal size with an introduction, a conclusion, an extensive bibliography, and four pages of abbreviations at the front (rather like those to be found in a dictionary). Inside the book there is an insert containing 27 reproductions, on glossy paper, of dictionary pages through the ages. This is followed by screenshots of a dictionary on CD-ROM, an online dictionary and the Wiktionary entry for ‘dictionary’, together with four black and white photographs of the people working on the OED from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present day.
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 Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language For those who are not familiar with him, David Crystal is the “David Bellamy of linguistics”, a knowledgeable, animated and bearded figure, and an outspoken commentator on contemporary language matters. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language is an ideal vehicle for his comprehensive knowledge. It is accessible, compelling and well organised, and deals with its topics with a depth that belies its glossy exterior and format. It is packed full of fascinating facts and is quite an inspiration to read, as well as being an ideal reference or revision tool.
In terms of its presentation and approach, this book resembles Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. The Houston Chronicle, referring to that earlier work, commented that ‘you can’t turn a page without learning some fascinating titbit about our common tongue.’ I would make a similar claim for The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. It seems that anything you want to look up is there in some form or other, and there is a wealth of new information and interest, making it a perfect book for idle browsing as well as serious study and reference.
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 English Today If you’re reading this I can guess that you are either a language teacher (current, former or prospective) or that you have some other affiliation (work, pleasure or both) with the English language. You’re also likely one of 500 million speakers of the most global language in history. Nonetheless, I can’t possibly guess where you are right now – you maybe at home or at work, on a train or in a tuk-tuk, by the coast or in the mountains, for we English teachers manage to get almost everywhere, in the same way as the object of our profession manages to spread itself unceasingly into every sphere of the global human network. The language of the World Cup, as denoted by Fifa™, is English, and England, the birthplace of both English and football, nowadays has a major impact on neither. It is the de-facto language of academic
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Language Teaching (henceforth LT) is one of our field’s longest running (since 1968) and most prestigious journals; getting published in it is only slightly short of getting knighted by the Queen. All exaggeration aside, LT’s most distinctive characteristic is its variety of article formats, including Plenary speeches, Research timelines, A country in focus, A language in focus, Surveys of PhD/ED.D theses, Annual reviews of research, Research in progress and the Comparative book reviews. I will look at these various types of article below.
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 Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R This book is a comprehensive practical introduction to using R (open source software) for corpus linguistics. It is a big book, almost 250 pages long, and it is very hands on. It therefore takes a long time to work through. Fortunately, the companion website provides downloadable files with all the command lines already typed out. The software is freely downloadable from The Comprehensive R Archive Network website and the companion files are available on the CorpLing with R companion website, but a CD might have been a useful addition to the book for those who do not have easy internet access. The instructions, although a bit off-putting at first, are actually quite easy to follow, even for someone as inexpert as this reviewer. Unfortunately, in the book, code lines are printed in black on a grey background, which does not make for easy reading.
The book starts with a brief outline, which very honestly points out that this is not an easy book, while expressing the hope that it will help the reader to become a good corpus linguist. Chapter 2 is a short introduction to the field of corpus linguistics. Presumably any reader interested in buying this book already knows something about corpus linguistics. There are however a few thought-provoking questions, such as the apparently easy to answer “What is a word?” which is immediately
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 The Articulate Mammal As this book was first published in 1976, with subsequent editions in 1983, 1989, 1998 and finally a fifth edition in 2008, it would appear that many people are interested in learning more about psychololinguistics, and that the subject requires regular updating. Jean Aitchison is an accomplished writer, well able to simplify complex topics without too much dumbing down, and the first chapters make an entertaining and illuminating read. No prior knowledge of the subject is necessary, and most language teachers will be fascinated by the insights provided into the whys and hows of language in the brain.
It is slightly difficult to review the fifth edition of a book: what is new and what is different about this edition? The accompanying website offers hope: there are three audio links, including one to a discussion entitled “What is new in the fifth edition? What are the emerging debates in the field?” Unfortunately, that link doesn’t work. Even more unfortunately, neither do the other two! It is a bit disappointing that the companion website announced on the front cover is not put to better use. Then again, there is no mention of the website inside the book, so perhaps it is awaiting development for the next edition.
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 Since the phenomenon was first described by John Sinclair in 1987 and given its name by Sinclair and Louw, semantic prosody has been much debated by corpus linguists, with various interpretations being put forward. The first example to be described was “set in”. John Sinclair remarked that “The most striking feature of this phrasal verb is the nature of its subjects. In general, they refer to unpleasant states of affairs.” This book by Dominic Stewart sets out to provide a critical evaluation of this phenomenon (only in a hardback edition1, so it is probably intended mainly for the library market or as a university textbook).
Louw suggested in 1993 that semantic prosody can be reversed- either intentionally, to create irony, or unintentionally, thus revealing insincerity. It may also perhaps reveal non-native language competence, as when a student’s supervisor was thanked for “his persistent help and advice”, (as quoted by Hunston in 2007). Semantic prosody may therefore be a useful area of study for the language teacher, and concordance analysis can serve as a valid proxy for native-speaker experience.
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This textbook is an important new contribution to the discipline of linguistics because it considers corpus from a speaking point of view and, drawing on corpora of both spoken and written texts, explains comparisons between the features of spoken English and written English. Furthermore, this book incorporates a thorough literature review of all major texts written about using corpora, and as such represents an up-to-date bibliography of previous work on the topic, and presents the latest
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 The book is divided into four main parts: key issues in researching language learning/teaching, data collection, data analysis and writing up research. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are discussed, alongside popular mixed-methods approaches, such as triangulated studies, thus covering many of the methods commonly employed in the field. As such, this text may be particularly useful as pre-reading material for teachers beginning an MA in applied linguistics, providing a thorough introduction to the wide variety of research methodologies, which may help in deciding what type of research to conduct for a
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This book is one of many in Cambridge’s Studies in Language Testing series. This volume is compiled of 20 edited papers that were presented at the 2nd ALTE (Association of Language Testers in Europe) Conference in Berlin, May 2005. At first glance it is aesthetically simple and very academic in appearance. This made me very apprehensive to open it as I wasn’t sure
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Full title: World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching
Author: Andy Kirkpatrick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Reviewed by: Eric Roth
Do the English in England speak the same English as the Americans, the Jamaicans, the South Africans, the Australians, the Irish, and the Indians? Do they even speak the same English as they did 100 years ago before radio, television, and the internet? Should there be a global standard for all English speakers? Linguist Andy Kirkpatrick raises these and many other provocative questions in his exceptionally documented book “World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching” published by Cambridge University Press. What does it mean if a majority of English speakers are actually English as a second language speakers? Can we actually assert that one version of English is more correct, formal, or proper than
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Publisher: Oxford University Press
Authors: A P R Howatt with H G Widdowson
Despite the fact that I could obviously judge the topic of the book from the title, this history of TEFL and TESOL was in no way what I expected before I started reading it. How that was a good and bad thing for me is examined below, along with some ideas on who else this book might be of interest to and a summary of some of the most interesting
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Editor: Robert DeKeyser,
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
This is a very clearly structured work which perfectly describes many of the issues which have or could have any kind of implication in language practice, a very important point within the whole educational process dealing with language teaching and learning. It offers a panoramic view of
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Author: Stephen Andrews
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
This book by Stephen Andrews seems to be the first major publication on TLA (Teacher Language Awareness- how much teachers know about the language they are teaching), which initially surprised me at a time when you could easily fill a whole bookshop with books on Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and SLA. As I read the introduction, though, his premise that teachers could teach better by knowing more about the English language
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Editor: Carol Griffiths
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
This book was written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Joan Rubin’s article “What the ‘good language learner’ can teach us” about how we can analyse what makes some people more successful at learning languages and how this should change
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