Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World: Linguistic and Cognitive Perspectives by Jennifer Austin, María Blume, and Liliana Sánchez (review)

Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World: Linguistic and Cognitive Perspectives not only highlights recent linguistic and cognitive developments among bilingual children and adults, it also provides a critical review of current understandings in the field of bilingualism. An important feature of this book is its emphasis on three main language contact scenarios: English-Spanish in the United States, Spanish-Euskara in Spain, and Spanish-Quechua in Peru. As will be evident to the reader, these are axiomatic to the thematic development of this book and serve to illustrate notions, models, and theoretical frameworks throughout the chapters.

Structurally, the book is divided into four chapters, with each subsequent one building on the previous. The introductory chapter serves as a critical survey of notions and topics that are paramount to the understanding of bilingualism. As such, this introduction is intended to equip the novice reader with the terminology necessary to fully understand the upcoming chapters, while still maintaining an informational value to more experienced scholars. After discussing key concepts such as language transfer, interference, convergence, or code-switching, the focus is switched to providing a broad overview of Spanish language contact and bilingualism across the world, with specific interest in the three focal regions mentioned above (i.e., United States, Spain, and Peru).

After the introduction, chapter 1 delves into one of the fundamental concerns in bilingualism studies: that of defining and categorizing bilinguals (and types of bilingualism). By reviewing long standing assumptions in the field such as 1) age of acquisition; 2) cognitive development; and 3) linguistic competence, the authors are able to question traditional understandings about bilingualism and bilingualism research (e.g., expectations of ultimate attainment, comparative fallacies). As a logical transition towards the understanding of differential outcomes in bilingualism, chapter 2, “Bilingual Brains, Bilingual Minds,” offers a neuroscientifically informed description of the physiological elements as well as the cognitive models that shape our current knowledge of the bilingual brain. This is complemented by an extensive review of recent studies on the benefits of bilingualism, as well as the nature of the processes driving language loss (e.g., attrition, aphasia). The closing chapter, “Bilingual Development and Bilingual Outcomes,” evolves around two key aspects that have fueled bilingualism research in the recent past, namely, the development of bilingual syntax (i.e., unitary system vs. separate development hypothesis) and the development of the bilingual lexicon (i.e., storage, access, activation).

Given its soundness as a stand-alone volume, as well as its validity in complementing the existing literature, our overall evaluation of this book is highly positive. Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World addresses, clearly and concisely, the most important topics and notions in the field of bilingualism from a linguistic and a cognitive perspective. It strikes a good balance between length and depth in its treatment of each one of the topics covered. Individually, each of the sections has been carefully written in a palatable manner making it a remarkably informative, yet uncomplicated read. In fact, in spite of their interconnectedness, each one of the chapters is a highly informative self-contained read, provided that the reader is acquainted with the necessary terminology. As a whole, its 189 pages (excluding references and index) offer a clear and broad overview not only to those undergraduate students that may be new to the field, but also to more experienced graduate students who will find this read amenable and of great explanatory value. This is partly thanks to the accurate choice of topics treated, and partly owing to the variety of explanations provided in each of the three language contact scenarios studied. In so doing, the authors take the reader by the hand around an up-to-date state of the science. From a theoretical standpoint, Austin et al. have been able to present a comprehensive overview of...