This ethnography of communication focuses on person reference by Bininj Gunwok speakers of northern Australia's Western Arnhem Land, and contains insights relevant to the fields of anthropology and linguistics, including pragmatics and conversation analysis. Garde focuses particularly on how Bininj Gunwok speakers make use of rich lexical, pronominal, and grammatical resources to refer to entities in ways that often require substantial inferential work for the addressee, and which may even then remain vague or indeterminate. This applies not only to semantically light expressions (e.g. pronouns) but also to complex acts of reference with highly explicit descriptive detail. This appears to be motivated by a ‘preference for circumspection, which involves a culturally motivated systematic avoidance of names and other explicit expressions with a high level of referential specificity’ (p. 144). For speakers, such circumspection can become a form of verbal artistry and source of intellectual pleasure, while requiring of the addressee(s) detailed local knowledge to enable interpretation, and thereby acting as a test of mutual knowledge.

The book's nine substantive chapters are illustrated with generous conversational extracts. Chapter 2 focuses on Bininj Gunwok's highly complex kinship systems. Garde introduces the basic kin terms—defined as those involving a two-place relation between the referent and the origo—and discusses the various layers of social categorization that become relevant to reference. Chapter 3 introduces a range of diverse referring practices, including dyadic terms (e.g. father + child), kinship verbs (similar to the English verb to father), references to the deceased, and terms for subsection (skin name or marriage class) and clan name. Chapter 4 gives an in-depth account of the highly intricate system of triadic kinship reference known as kun-debi, through which speakers make use of approximately 170 terms that index three-way kinship relations between speaker, addressee, and referent. Chapter 5 focuses on the grammatical resources available in Bininj Gunwok and their role in creating referential indeterminacy in referent tracking contexts. Chapter 6 explores cultural factors and specific contexts that promote referential vagueness and circumspection in ordinary conversation.

The descriptive framework established in earlier chapters is applied in chapters 7 and 8 to detailed analyses of extended extracts, illustrating how various referring practices are deployed in single conversations. Analyses of a conversational narrative and telephone call are presented in chapter 7, with Garde highlighting ‘how general preferences of person reference, such as principles of economy and achieving recognition might be culturally particularized’ or even ‘considered inapplicable’ in some contexts (p. 220). Chapter 8 considers an extended act of reference that ultimately proves unsuccessful, and highlights ways in which referent recognition may not be achieved, yet may nevertheless prove communicatively ‘fruitful’ by identifying the referent's position within ‘a shared social network’ (p. 239). In the final chapter, Garde broadens the discussion to consider cultural values in Bininj Gunwok and how these are displayed in acts of person reference.

Throughout this work, Garde's extensive field work, cultural expertise, warmth, insight, and passion for Bininj Gunwok communities are compelling, and the book stands as an impressive contribution to scholarship on reference.