Professor Francisco Moreno's research into Spanish language variation has played a leading role in the Hispanic countries. The list of his numerous articles and books is a testament to his significance. In this volume he provides a precise and articulate description of a cognitive approach to unsolved questions in sociolinguistics—old topics focused on from new perspectives.

In the foreword, Moreno has assembled a set of important commentaries on approaches to linguistics that have helped to highlight new research directions, and on the discoveries of a number of other disciplines (neuroscience, psychology, sociology, mathematics, physics, and IT) that served to promote new perspectives. He also reflects on the necessity of overcoming linguistic immanence and essentialism (Janicki Reference Janicki2006) to reach a multidimensional and integrated account in order to explain the relationships between linguistic production and the natural, social, and cultural components of communicative acts. From this point of view, language use (see Bybee Reference Bybee2010), social networks, which are understood as complex networks (see Solé Reference Solé2009), and emergentist (see Johnson Reference Johnson2001) and dynamic systems proposals (see Thelen & Smith Reference Thelen and Smith1996) will be an important theoretical foundation.

In Moreno's opinion, the study of linguistic phenomena must be based on interaction in particular contexts, to overcome the duality of langue/parole and explanations based merely on the perception of communicative intentions, in order to account for linguistic negotiation, founded on the notion of cooperative behavior; the multiplicity of agents; the concomitance of linguistic and extralinguistic factors; the emergence of interactional, experiential, and cognitive patterns and their accumulation; and embodied linguistic use, all of which are highly relevant in embodied cognition (Lakoff & Johnson Reference Lakoff and Johnson1980, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch Reference Varela, Thompson and Rosch1992; Clark Reference Clark1997; Damasio Reference Damasio1999; Gallagher Reference Gallagher2005). From this point of view, Professor Moreno notes that cognitive sociolinguistics is a meta-theory of social interaction compatible with different research methodologies and theories, building heavily on communicative accommodation/adaptation theory and on ecolinguistic, variationist, and usage-based models (Rosch & Lloyd Reference Rosch and Lloyd1978; Labov Reference Labov1994, Reference Labov2001, Reference Labov2010; Bybee Reference Bybee2001, Reference Bybee2010; Fill & Mühlhäuser Reference Fill and Mühlhäuser2001; Mufwene Reference Mufwene2001, Reference Mufwene2008; Shepard, Giles, & Le Poire Reference Shepard, Giles, Le Poire, Robinson and Giles2001; Bod et al. Reference Bod, Hay and Jannedy2003; Mendoza-Denton et al. Reference Mendoza-Denton, Hay and Jannedy2003). With this background, Moreno claims that a significant part of variation consists in the overt manifestation of perceptible patterns and in the speaker's ability to accommodate his or her language to the surroundings. Not only must social and linguistic constraints on linguistic variables be considered on an equal footing with cognitive ones, but we also need to be conscious of the importance of the speaker's capacity to pay attention to his or her own discourse and to modify it, consciously applying the knowledge (linguistic, interactional, social, cultural, etc.) that monitors communicative behavior.

In the following chapter, the author points out that cognitive sociolinguistics is a discipline in which the focus is on the categorization and stereotyping of linguistic and social patterns (objective environment) and the way these patterns are perceived by speakers (subjective environment). Moreno invites us to look more closely at the notion of social class, unveiling two concepts: social groups, which may be correlated with linguistic/perceptive features, and social networks, characterized by frequent and direct contact between the members and not necessarily by common objective features. The structures and particular dynamisms of both groups cross over. The third chapter offers a cognitive vision of speakers' world representation, a mental construction inside a sociocultural surrounding and a part of the cognitive subconscious, discourse, and its social dimension and the locus that the speaker occupies in society. The author considers the notions of context from the point of view of “context sociology theory” (van Dijk Reference van Dijk2011, Reference van Dijk2012), along with the notions of styles and discourse and the concepts of courtesy and ideology and its relationships with the notion of norm. In Ch. 4, Moreno explains how cognitive sociolinguistics appears to enhance language variation with the speakers' ability to identify and perceive this in the stream of speech. He insists on the relevance of the monitor hypotheses and on the organization of the language system through schemes and prototypes.

Chs. 5–7 are concerned with semantics, grammar, and phonology. In the light of semantic variables available for linguistic variation, Labovian sociolinguistics has run the risk of limiting the field too narrowly, as it focused only on linguistic equivalence. Moreno adopts the idea that linguistic meaning is partially emergent (Janicki Reference Janicki2006), and he introduces the difference between identity and equivalence, based on the possibility of distinguishing between the signifier—that allows discursive meaning negotiation—and the meaning variation. In Ch. 6, Moreno pleads for a more integrated approach, defending the idea that grammatical variation cannot be explained and understood without its relationships with the context and discourse, communicative interaction, and the speaker's experience and perception. In line with the construction grammar approach, the complex, adaptive, and emergent system conception of language, and usage-based grammar, he proposes constructions as the basic units, and the speaker's experience, the contextual linguistic negotiation, and the frequency of use as the principles that must be observed by the researcher. The bulk of the discussion on phonological variation, Ch. 7, has to do with how each speaker perceives, categorizes, and stores sounds. Moreno addresses the revision of the phoneme that takes into account the fuzzy borderline between functional phonological areas. This is precisely linked not only to concepts such as scheme and prototype (see Nathan Reference Nathan, Geeraerts and Cuyckens2007) but also to usage-based phonology proposals (see Bybee Reference Bybee2001).

Chs. 8–10 focus on the methodology of cognitive sociolinguistics. The mechanism of observation—the interview—is associated with the social dimension of language and the perception of the linguistic forms, taking into account a variety of perception indicators: indicators for “I” as a speaker and “you” as an interlocutor, and discursive and contextual indicators. This also operates with some of Langacker's principles: factuality, economy, explicitness, generality, and predictiveness (Langacker Reference Langacker1987:34 & seq.).

Ch. 11 is on the perception of linguistic varieties: the speaker's ability to detect and grasp the prestigious or standard language and to modify his linguistic behavior so as to fit that variety. Very relevant is the concept of perception; Moreno emphasizes the idea that the perceptive process can be directed towards individual or collective entities and towards the consideration of various levels of linguistic varieties using the prototypes, features, and exemplar theories. The last chapter draws new connections between the sociolinguistics and research on languages in contact. Moreno surveys new and fruitful ways of exploring contact, which imply new and different types of treatment, and discusses the implications of these findings.

Taken together, the chapters of this book constitute a very relevant proposal for cognitive sociolinguistics. The author debates the most important aspects of the theory and methodology of this discipline rooted in a multi-perspective, complex, dynamic, embodied, emergentist. and sociocultural conceptions of language, looking forward into how sociolinguistics might develop.