Manual of Romance Sociolinguistics ed. by Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Janice Carruthers (review)

This timely volume sets out the challenges and opportunities for sociolinguistic research in Romance. Its twenty-eight clear and authoritative chapters are grouped under five key themes, the first of which, ‘Methodological Issues’, provides guidance on the annotation of oral corpora, conducting fieldwork on creole or endangered varieties, and statistical modelling techniques. Francis Manzano closes the section with a call for a sociolinguistically informed dialectology to carry forward the legacy of Jules Gilliéron, Edmond Edmont, Albert Dauzat, and others. The second section (‘Variation and Change’) consists of two chapters on speaker variables and four which offer a diachronic perspective, including a cross-linguistic comparison of the subjunctive. Nigel Armstrong and Ian MacKenzie revisit the failure of the Labovian paradigm to make significant inroads in continental Europe, while Wendy Ayres-Bennett addresses the ‘bad data’ problem facing historical sociolinguists who work with fragmentary and/or unrepresentative written materials. Joan Costa-Carreras explores the ideological underpinnings of prescriptivism, both for codified national languages such as French and for minority languages such as Ladin. The next two sections foreground the potential of emergent research themes. In ‘Medium, Register, Text Type and Genre’, Janice Carruthers examines the complex interplay between oral genres, medium, and register in French; Rodica Zafiu investigates register and text type from the perspective of Romanian. Ralph Ludwig considers the implications of a growing media presence for creole varieties, while Daniel Kallweit explores new Romance varieties arising from computer-mediated communication. ‘Linguae minores’ sets out a research agenda for minoritized Romance languages. Three national case studies (Spain, Italy, and Switzerland) present contrasting accounts of diversity and language policy, the historical development of which is discussed by Klaus Bochmann, whose observations on Romania and Moldova complement more familiar Western European examples. Perspectives on revitalization are offered by Robert Blackwood, whose linguistic landscape framework highlights competition for visibility in the public space, and by Anna Ghimenton and Giovanni Depau, who identify five recurrent themes in minority-language education policy. The final section is devoted to Romance varieties in contact both with other Romance varieties and with typologically unrelated languages, reviewed respectively by Kim Schulte and Anna María Escobar. Mairi McLaughlin provides a measured assessment of contact with English — a subject which, in France at least, has too often generated more heat than light. In contrasting papers on French, Barbara E. Bullock explores the effects of isolation among speakers in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, while Françoise Gadet and Philippe Hambye’s chapter on ‘metropolization’ argues that ecological conditions are more favourable to the development of new varieties in francophone Africa than in Europe, where the ideology of the standard remains dominant. The effects of migration are examined in Francesco Goglia’s chapter on code-switching in Italy, and in Clare Mar-Molinero and Darren Paffey’s investigation of ‘translanguaging’ among transnational Spanish-speaking migrants. Researchers and supervisors will welcome a volume which offers extensive coverage of contemporary Romance research themes and, where needed, a grounding in sociolinguistic theory drawn from anglophone sources. For linguists based in modern languages departments in particular, this is the handbook we have needed for some time.