Achard and Niemeier “hope that the different chapters in this volume will help establish the cognitive linguistics model as a valuable framework for the investigation of second language learning and teaching phenomena and provide the methodology to further extend the research” (p. 9). Not all of the chapters included realize that hope.

The first of the volume's two sections has a contribution from Cadierno, one from Warra and Lowie, and a third from Verspoor. These three chapters illustrate how a cognitive linguistic framework can be used to examine data—in particular, difficulties in target language (TL) learning that result from competition between the native and TL systems. The second section has chapters by Niemeier, Grundy, Goddard, Achard, Athanasiadou, Boers, Csábi, and Tyler and Evans. These contributions discuss how cognitive linguistic principles might inform and structure TL teaching. Ideas presented include using cognitive linguistics to facilitate grammar instruction in communicative classrooms and establishing social contexts or exploring semantic extensions to support the learning of TL lexical items.

The effectiveness of several of the chapters in this volume is limited by the authors' unfamiliarity with past research or their choice not to address it. For example, Lowie and Verspoor found that Dutch learners of English did least well in providing the correct English preposition when English marks a conceptual distinction that Dutch does not mark. They describe this as a “striking finding” (p. 89) and an “interesting observation that merits further investigation” (p. 91), but readers who are familiar with Stockwell, Bowen, and Martin's (1965a, 1965b) hierarchy of difficulty, which is still frequently presented in overviews of second language research (e.g., Ellis, 1994; Gass & Selinker, 2001; Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991), will not be struck by this finding. Instead, they will have anticipated it.

In her chapter on linguistic and cultural relativity, Niemeier states that “in a nutshell, Whorf proposed the idea that language has an influence on our way of thinking and thus on our perspective of reality” (p. 96). Then she extols the benefits of a “certain commitment to ‘Whorfianism’” (p. 100) to foreign language learners and developers of language teaching materials. Upon encountering these ideas without any mention of past works that have strongly rejected linguistic determinism (e.g., Carroll, 1992; Pullum, 1991), a reader might struggle not to question everything contained in this chapter.

The effectiveness of Grundy's chapter is limited by the force of his opening claim. He states that “the figure/ground gestalt undermines the discrete-item syllabus assumption … and it is precisely [the gestalt's] figure/ground properties, especially as revealed in its metapragmatic dimension, that make language comprehensible, and thus learnable” (p. 119). A claim that a single factor makes language comprehensible and learnable can make an experienced teacher or researcher skeptical, but it might cause novices to read on with much anticipation. As expected, in a mere 20 pages, Grundy is unable to support his claim convincingly. This is especially true because his support relies heavily on an analogy between language comprehension and visual perception.

Another factor that weakens some chapters' effectiveness is their apparent audience. The publisher's abstract states that this volume's intended audience “is composed of Cognitive Linguists, Second Language Acquisition specialists, as well as foreign language pedagogy researchers, instructors, and students” (Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2004). In fact, much of this volume seems to be a discussion among cognitive linguists, which makes irrelevant its editors' goal that it “help establish the cognitive linguistics model as a valuable framework for the investigation of second language learning and teaching phenomena” (p. 9). This apparent audience also explains the frequent use of approach- and discipline-specific terms that are not well explained, the untranslated German examples in Niemeier's chapter, and perhaps even Niemeier's apparent view that it is unnecessary to defend Whorfianism as well as Grundy's strong claims for the value of the figure/ground gestalt.

Even though a number of factors, including those listed, limit this volume's overall effectiveness, it does contain contributions that successfully demonstrate the potential usefulness of cognitive linguistics. In her chapter, Cadierno investigates the influence of their native language's preferred patterns on the way Dutch learners of Spanish describe and express motion events in the TL. She adeptly uses cognitive linguistics to help explain her findings. Goddard, in his chapter, draws from cognitive linguistic work in the area of crosslinguistic semantics to exemplify with English and Malay how cultural key words and scripts can explain TL discourse patterns and styles. This model promises to make valuable contributions to the teaching and learning of TL pragmatics.