Al-kitaab fii ta'allum al-'arabiyya: A textbook for beginning Arabic, part 1 by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Abbas Al-Tonsi, and: Elementary Arabic: An integrated approach: Student workbook by Munther Younes (review)

REVIEWS627 adding organization to the conversation. Finally, the evolving talk about the dispute takes the discourse from the private household to the public arena; the private voices eventually become suppressed behind the social and linguistic authority of public voices (parents, dispute settlers, elders). In another longer piece, B explores conflict and the narrative of domestic disharmony among the Warao of eastern Venezuela, examining the discussion of one marriage breakup. He asks why, among these people, so much keen interest was taken in a single failed marriage. He claims that such a particular social interaction becomes a powerful synecdoche for the bigger relations of inequality prevalent in the area, such as the status of indigenous people within a larger nationstate or the disparity of male-female roles. One Warao official 'dispute mediation' is examined in great detail, presenting the stories of the troubled couple, Diego and Maria, and the response ofthe government-appointed 'commissioner' . Eventually Maria leaves her husband because of his repeated verbal and physical abuse, which at first glance seems to suggest that the counseling from the commissioner was of little help. However, as B shows, dispute resolution is special privileged discourse in Warao society; not only does conducting a formal inquiry check much of the local gossip going around, it also constructs and reifies authority. The commissioner's task, then, is to be sure that 'good and bad words about the conflict emerge ... in ways that enable him to control their production and contain their effects' (234). This collection will be very useful for those interested in the ethnography of speaking, cultural or sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and conversational or discourse analyses of various kinds. There is a wealth of data for those who want to see real, ethnographically-based, examples of the disorderly discourse of conflict and inequality. It is not always a pretty sight, but the realms of contested meanings rarely are. Anthropology 4640 104 Edwards Hall Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790 [stanlaw@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu] Al-kitaab fii tafallum al-Tarabiyya: A textbook for beginning Arabic, part 1. By Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al-Batal, and Abbas Al-Tonsi. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1995. Pp. xxv, 514. (Includes a separate volume AUf baa: Introduction to Arabic letters and sounds, Pp. 202, 2 answer keys; 2 videotapes, 14 audiotapes.) Elementary Arabic: An integrated approach: Student workbook. By Munther Younes. (Yale language series.) New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv, 401. (Includes teacher's manual. Pp. 101; 3 audiotapes.) $15.00. Reviewed by Maher Awad, University of Colorado at Boulder Because of the diglossic situation in Arabic, whereby speakers learn two varieties of the language—the natively-acquired colloquial and the standard used in written and formal discourses —most textbooks designed to teach Arabic as a second language have opted to teach either a colloquial variety or the standard, but not both, in a single work. The two works reviewed here represent a welcome departure from this practice, a practice that often leaves many second language learners bewildered in their perception that learning Arabic amounts in essence to learning two languages. These two ambitious works dispel this perception in their shared philosophical orientation that Standard Arabic (called Fusha in Arabic) and a colloquial variety can be integrated in a single pedagogical program that views the two varieties as two facets of one linguistic reality rather than as two separate realities. The two works, which follow a communica- 628LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) tive, content-based approach in their integration of Fusha and die colloquial, are comprehensive introductions to Arabic—equivalent to one year of college-level instruction—for adult English speakers. Brustad et al.'s work integrates Fusha and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, and Younes's integrates Fusha and Levantine (Greater Syrian) Colloquial Arabic. B et al.'s program consists of two books, AUfbaa and Al-kitaab, each of which is accompanied by an answer key, one videotape, and a set of audiotapes—four for AUf baa and ten for Alkitaab } The goal of the program is to enable the student to attain an intermediate-level fluency in Arabic in all the four language skills—listening, speaking, reading, writing—so that the student can communicate...