Fredric Field's Bilingualism in the USA: The case of the Chicano-Latino community is a comprehensive and accessible overview with particular focus on societal bilingualism. Bilingualism in the USA defines and synthesizes important concepts in a broad range of relevant areas of linguistics (for example, sociolinguistics, literacy, and language acquisition), and grounds discussion of US Chicano-Latino bilingualism in its sociohistorical context with particular relevance for education.
Field begins with an introduction of bilingualism as an international phenomenon, and a history of Spanish in terms of language contact and change. He broadly discusses language acquisition and types of bilingualism as regards cognition, proficiency, and social situations. He also addresses the implications of language proficiency testing (Ch. 2). Field does an excellent job addressing the complexity of these scenarios and discussing the different sociocultural factors that can affect bilingual households. Chs. 3 and 4 provide an accessible overview of bilingual phenomena such as borrowing, code-switching, and Chicano English, and relate bilingual practices to social and community frameworks. Field then reviews historic US attitudes towards multilingualism with particular focus on the American Southwest (Ch. 5). Chs. 6 and 7 discuss education and literacy in detail, and productively compare bilingual education programs. The book concludes with a general discussion about the current state of the Chicano-Latino community in terms of language, demographics, and necessary educational reforms.
The book is designed to be useful in the university classroom and is generally well-organized. Chapters are clearly introduced and end with concise summaries, reviews of key terms, and suggested activities (e.g. discussion topics, sample essay questions). Field uses short, clarifying examples, and provides extensive footnotes that define and expand on linguistic concepts such as “speech register.” Finally, when defining terms, he carefully acknowledges the difficulties inherent to ethnic category labels (i.e. “Hispanic,” “Latino,” “Chicano;” 12–15).
While the book does an excellent job addressing specifics of the Chicano situation (reflected in the term “Chicano-Latino”), more information about other US Latino groups would be instructive (for example, the two other “most frequently studied” groups: Cubans and Puerto Ricans; 16). Although Chicano English is not the book's primary focus, an expanded discussion about dialectal identity work could productively parallel the discussion of code-switching as “mark[ing] or indicat[ing] social identity” (96). Finally, it would be useful to mention methods such as phonemic comparison, noted by Carmen Fought in Language and ethnicity (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which may help distinguish Chicano English from “English with a Spanish accent,” although, as Field notes, each simply represents a different point in a continuum (121).
In sum, Field achieves his goal of providing a “more informed view of linguistic diversity and societal bilingualism in the U.S.” (16). His book gives a solid introduction to key concepts in bilingualism and excels on social aspects such as education, identity, prestige, and discrimination. With its implications for multilingual awareness, education, and equity, Bilingualism in the USA is recommended for those studying and working in the fields of multilingualism, education, school administration, and educational policy.
