As the words “discourse” and “action” in the title suggest, this volume focuses on the pragmatic aspects of SLA with a selection of refereed articles from the 1999 conference Acquisition d'une langue étrangère: perspectives et recherches “Acquisition of a foreign language: Perspectives and research” with the theme Usages pragmatiques et acquisition d'une langue étrangère “Pragmatic uses and acquisition of a foreign language.” In the introduction, the editors provide a brief overview of SLA research with a clear emphasis on pragmatic issues—for example, differences between naturalistic and classroom acquisition in terms of social contexts and interactional patterns. The volume contains three thematic sections followed by an epilogue featuring the written version of three contributions that served as a synthesis at the end of the conference. Each section is followed by grouped bibliographic references. This particular organization is a little off-putting, especially because this editorial choice is never clearly mentioned in the text. Further, the reference sections are somewhat sloppy with spelling inconsistencies for author names (Vygotski and Vygotsky), publication dates in the bibliography that do not always correspond to the article citations, and several in-text references omitted from the bibliography.

Section 1, Cognition et activités métalinguistiques “Cognition and Metalinguistic Activities,” features five articles and focuses on the cognitive and metalinguistic dimensions underpinning instructed SLA. Jeanneret's article, Traitement interactif de structures syntaxiques dans une perspective acquisitionnelle “Interactive Treatment of Syntactic Structures in an Acquisitional Perspective,” suggests for example that syntactic structures can be effectively acquired through interactive discourse. She presents a wealth of interesting data in English, German, and French. A minor quibble is that none of the examples are glossed for readers who do not know all three languages.

The five articles in section 2, Les compétences pragmatiques dans l'acquisition d'une langue 2 “Pragmatic Competences in Second Language Acquisition,” are among the most interesting. These articles consider the pragmatic and discourse competence needed or manifested in a second language (L2) class or situation. Most papers feature interesting discussions based on actual data from several large corpora. Gajo and Mondada, in Pratiques et appropriation de l'entretien dans une pluralité de contextes “Practices and Appropriation of Conversation in Multiple Contexts,” focus on what they term “interactional competence” and argue that this competency is crucial in successfully acquiring an L2. In a similar vein, Cicurel and Syled-Decla, in Les réagencements contextuels dans l'enseignement des langues “Contextual Reorganization in Language Teaching,” suggest that being a good language learner is not simply a matter of linguistic knowledge but rather involves knowing how to navigate different contexts successfully.

Section 3, Tâches narratives et acquisition d'une langue 2 “Narrative Tasks and Second Language Acquisition,” is the most narrowly focused, with only three contributions. Although the research questions are interesting—namely, what is involved in narrating in L2 and how do learners acquire this complex process—the papers are somewhat disappointing. For example, Clerc concludes in L'acquisition des conduites narratives en FLE “The Acquisition of Narrative Skills in French as a Foreign Language” that beginning learners narrate simply the basic facts and that more advanced learners provide more context and background. These conclusions seem fairly intuitive. Further, the cross-sectional data she uses with different learners at different levels exhibiting different narrative structures do not necessarily tell us anything about the development of these abilities over time in a single learner or group of learners.

The papers in the final section argue for opening the overall field of research in SLA to include a stronger role for sociocognitive processes and the pragmatic dimension. Arditty and Vasseur, in Contextes, variabilité et activités d'appropriation des langues “Context, Variability, and Activities for Language Appropriation,” go even further by enumerating several possible avenues for future research programs.

Although the articles and studies presented in this collection are more suggestive than definitive, this volume represents an original and valuable contribution to the field of SLA. This book would be interesting reading for graduate students who already have a firm base in SLA and for researchers, particularly those interested in pragmatics and integrating this domain within SLA theory.