The explicit editorial aim for this volume is to provide an overview of the interdisciplinary field of SLA and what is known about how humans acquire languages after their first. In the last 50 years of diverse systematic inquiry exploring one topic, SLA has become a field in its own right apart from the pedagogical concerns that motivated its genesis. In its independence, SLA has fruitfully adapted insights, approaches, and methodologies from disciplines as heterogeneous as linguistics, psychology, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and poststructuralist theory. This inherent variety makes such an overview ambitious but also valuable to SLA researchers and graduate students who wish to contextualize their own research programs. The volume’s 31 chapters, contributed by established experts and recognized newer scholars, together depict the discipline’s rich history of ideas and intellectual gains, ongoing and relevant debates, and current discourses. The editors incorporate current major theoretical conflicts—for example, qualitative versus quantitative paradigms, linguistic processing/generative versus emergentist/constructionist approaches to cognitive characterization of language, and internal mentalist or cognitive versus external interactionist or social conceptualization of language learning (Myles, Chapter 3)—in every thematic part of the volume. As noted by Ortega (Reference Ortega2009) in the preface to her own SLA textbook, such comprehensive overviews often sacrifice the “rough edges” and the “small stories” to generate a linear, coherent “big story,” which can result in a one-sided account (p. xiii). However, this volume’s nonlinear structural approach avoids these costs with its candid accounts of persistent controversies and unresolved debates in the field.
The chapters are grouped into six thematic sections. Part 1 “Theory and Practice” reviews the history of ideas (see especially Thomas, Chapter 2) that has led to current SLA theoretical approaches. It will be valuable to researchers and advanced students of SLA who wish to enhance their awareness of the field’s vicissitudes over time and its roots in other disciplines. Although Part 2, “Internal Ingredients,” is grouped by the thematic question of what each learner brings to language learning, these chapters present numerous theoretical stances that arise from a variety of distinct central research questions. Examples include a discussion of the influence of the first language (L1) on second language (L2) development (Foley & Flynn, Chapter 5), an incisive generativist explanation of poverty of the stimulus (Schwartz & Sprouse, Chapter 7), and a review of experimental research in alphabetical literacy and illiteracy (Tarone, Hansen, & Bigelow, Chapter 9) that suggests that much L2 phonology research to date may be ungeneralizable to alphabetically nonliterate learners. Similarly, in Part 3, which deals with “external ingredients,” topics range from negotiation of meaning in an interactionist paradigm (García Mayo & Alcón Soler, Chapter 10) to identity construction in poststructural and sociocultural theory (Miller & Kubota, Chapter 11) and the extension of learner environments from the actual to the virtual (Ensslin & Krummes, Chapter 14). The chapters in Parts 2 and 3 highlight the variety of programs to which both internal and external perspectives on SLA give rise. Emulating the structure of the first half of the volume, Part 4’s focus on the biological factors that must be considered in the study of all language learners frames the thematic opposition between the properties of interlanguage systems and transitional models of development covered in Parts 5 and 6, respectively. The chapters about biological effects on language discuss age effects and the so-called critical period (Herschensohn, Chapter 15), cognitive neuroscience and language processing (Foucart & Frenck-Mestre, Chapter 19), and the neurobiology of affect (Mates & Joaquin, Chapter 20). Part 5 continues to showcase variety in SLA, including generative approaches to semantics (Dekydtspotter, Chapter 22) and morphosyntax (Ionin, Chapter 24) alongside a review of L2 phonology and speech perception research (Broselow & Kang, Chapter 25). Part 6 opens with a discussion of the rationale and criteria for property and transition models (Sharwood Smith, Truscott, & Hawkins, Chapter 26) and a historical review of proposed models since the 1970s (Vainikka & Young-Scholten, Chapter 27). Part 6 also presents models based on emergentism (Holme, Chapter 28) and a thorough review of the role and growing importance of the zone of proximal development concept in sociocultural approaches to SLA (Ohta, Chapter 30). Considering the topic of the concluding chapter, which discusses ultimate attainment, learner end state, and fossilization (Lardiere, Chapter 31), it is ironic that this volume as a whole portrays SLA as a growing, thriving field with a rich variety of research programs and countless fresh research questions—no longer fledgling, but definitely not fossilized.
Within the structure of the volume, Part 4 seems less appropriately compiled compared to other, more cohesive, sections. The chapters on incomplete L1 acquisition (Montrul, Chapter 17) and third language acquisition (Rothman, Cabrelli Amaro, & de Bot, Chapter 18), although important topics in current SLA research, are biographical rather than biological. Given the strong representation of the social turn in SLA manifest in the interactionist and sociocultural approaches, it is surprising that the multilingual turn is not more fully represented. Although the notion of multicompetence is invoked in a few chapters, the relative paucity of reference to current discourse regarding the ideal native speaker construct versus multicompetent language users is disappointing. Nonetheless, readers will find the extensive glossary and selected references invaluable as entry points into the subfields presented (the exhaustive 172-page references list is available online at http://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/herschensohn-youngscholten). In addition to the topical index, most, though not all, chapters are thoroughly cross-referenced in this well-integrated volume to help readers trace where each contribution bears on the others. The volume’s thematic structure and dedication to presenting the state of SLA in terms of its history of ideas, plurality of approaches, and ongoing dynamic discourses make it a valuable resource for any SLA scholar interested in contextualizing his or her own research interests.
