Davies and Elder's volume is the latest in the Blackwell series of Handbooks in Linguistics. In this volume, the editors compile over 30 newly commissioned, well-written, and comprehensive articles that provide an in-depth view of the field of applied linguistics. Unlike Cook's (2003) recent introduction to applied linguistics for nonspecialists, the Davies and Elder volume shares the same intended audience—students and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching, and SLA—as the works of McCarthy (2001), McDonough (2002), and Seidlhofer (2003). Because of its comprehensive nature, this volume would best serve as a reference tool for SLA scholars and applied linguists rather than as a course text.

The handbook of applied linguistics is divided into two parts: readings that reflect linguistics applied (L-A) and those that represent applied linguistics (A-L). The editors generally distinguish between these two disciplines in the following manner: L-A refers to the use of “language data to develop our linguistic knowledge about language” (p. 11) and thus inform linguistic theory, whereas A-L fulfills a more socially responsive role by studying “a language problem … with a view to correcting it” (p. 11). However, the editors note that the distinction between L-A and A-L is only sustainable at the extremes and that many of the papers designated as either L-A or A-L could have easily been categorized under the other rubric. Thus, the editors conclude that this distinction might lie in the research orientation of the scholars themselves—for example, does a researcher wish to validate a theory (L-A), solve a practical problem (A-L), or perhaps accomplish both goals?

Chapters listed under the L-A rubric include the following: “Language Descriptions and Lexicography” (section 1); “SLA and Ultimate Attainment, Language Corpora and Discourse Analysis” (section 2); “British Sign Language, Assessing Language Attitudes: Speaker Evaluation Studies, Language Attrition, Language, Thought and Culture, and Conversation Analysis” (section 3); “Language and the Law, Language and Gender, and Stylistics” (section 4); “Language and Politics and World Englishes” (section 5); and “The Philosophy of Applied Linguistics” (section 6). On the other hand, the A-L chapters contain the following: “The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics, Language Minorities, and for Applied Linguistics: Scope Characteristics and Standards” (section 7); “Second Language Learning, Individual Differences in Second Language Learning, and Social Influences on Language Learning and Literary Studies” (section 8); “Fashions in Language Teaching Methodology, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Language Teacher Education, the Practice of Languages for Special Purposes, and Bilingual Education” (section 9); “Language Maintenance, Language Planning as Applied Linguistics, Language Testing” (section 10); and “Critical Applied Linguistics” (section 11).

To provide an explanation of the organizational infrastructure of the volume, the editors provide an introduction to each of the two divisions of the book—L-A and A-L—in which they painstakingly explain their categorizations of the 32 chapters into 11 different subsections, which move from the most linguistic (theoretical or descriptive) topics to the most applied. Although this effort is laudable, the fact that the distinction between the two orientations is by their own admission often difficult to discern, some of the categorization rationalizations seem somewhat forced and overly defensive. In fact, the inordinate amount of time the editors spend on justifying their categorizations of the papers into either L-A or A-L distracts from their introductions of the papers themselves.

To conclude, Davies and Elder's volume makes a valuable contribution to the field of applied linguistics by demonstrating that the gap that once existed between the traditions of formal linguistics and applied linguistics is closing and that the result of this gap closure might be a more symbiotic and fruitful relationship between linguistic theory and its application.