This book reviews studies that have utilized corpus analysis of oral Spanish, in order to introduce the field of oral discourse. The work focuses on social and contextual varieties, emphasizing an approach that tackles the analysis of linguistic blocks restricted to an interactional unit. The plan of action is explained in chap. 1. Chap. 2 deals with the 1950–1965 period (dialectology and stylistics); chap. 3 discusses the 1966–1979 period and focuses on quantitative studies (social dialectology, sociolinguistics, and developmental psycholinguistics); chap. 4 corresponds to 1980–1989 and deals with discourse analysis; and finally, chap. 5 treats the 1990–1999 period and examines the different types of oral discourse, genre, registers, social dialects, and textual models. The works collected for this study cover 4,241 bibliographical entries that are cross-referenced with the CD-ROM, which displays the bibliography as a Microsoft Word document. The types of analysis are (A) intraenunciativo, (B) enunciativo, and (C) superenunciativo. We believe that by A, the author refers to components of the sentence within the sentence or intrasentential; by B he may refer to discourse at the level of the utterance, which is the result of the speech act; and by C he may refer to the level of the discourse, which is made of turns.

Chap. 2 (“1950–1965: El período de los estudios dialectológicos y estilísticos”) covers studies of spoken Spanish, specifically those about the colloquial register or those associated with research on dialectology and stylistics, which are based on literary data or on casual observation. The bulk of those studies clearly favors the focus on the “situación real.” The works of this period are divided into three major trends: dialectology, stylistics, and descriptive-functional. A concern for morpho-syntactic aspects stimulated studies such as the Proyecto del estudio de la norma culta. Other works focusing on the situación real reveal their concern with various external factors related to language (e.g., social class, age, gender, personality, style, and even domain). The works of general dialectology resort to a methodology based on the intraenunciativa. Stylistics was concerned with affective and associative aspects that integrate the content of the expression with that of the logical reference. The author studies the use of expressive resources such as iteration, ellipsis, hyperbole, and diminutives and augmentatives.

The descriptive-functional studies retrieve the corpus from literary texts. This line of research contributes to descriptive grammar by using the linguistic fact as a point of departure, while the method utilized to approach the corpus is not psychological but functional. Analyses of Mexican Spanish and/or Mexican literature are abundant sources in this line of research. These scholars attempted to contribute to descriptive grammar departing from written texts which imitate the colloquial register and the direct conversation of several subjects. The objective was to verify the data of literary texts or to rectify the former, if needed.

Chap. 3 (“1966–1979: El período de estudios cuantitativos: Dialectología social, sociolingüística y psicolingüística del desarrollo”) begins with the landmark year of 1966, when the limits and methodology of the Proyecto de estudio coordinado del habla culta de las principales ciudades del mundo hispánico were established. Key also in this chapter is the appearance of the first psycholinguistic work applied to the acquisition of spoken Spanish. These events came to condition the approaches taken to spoken Spanish during this second period. Yet the most influential studies of the 14 years covered in this chapter were of a quantitative nature, especially those in urban social dialectology arising from the Proyecto.

The Proyecto provided the impetus and a standardized framework for a widespread and sustained effort in data collection and interpretation. The choice of the “educated standard” (norma culta) as the object of study has been criticized for various reasons, but the Proyecto and derived studies have provided a wealth of information. Quantitative approaches, carried out systematically and with a duly rigorous methodology, found wide acceptance in the Spanish-speaking world, especially in Mexico and Argentina.

The field of developmental psycholinguistics (language acquisition) makes its first appearance in this chapter owing to the number of empirical studies (43) produced during this period; their quantitative character also lends support to their inclusion here. Topics from the previous chapter (dialectology and stylistics) are revisited as works continued to appear in those domains.

The areas of discourse analysis and pragmatics, introduced at the end of chap. 3, are treated in depth in chap. 4 (“1980–1989: Entre la oralidad y la cuantificación: Estudios de análisis del discurso”). The concept of orality vs. literacy (oralidad vs. escritura) is key here. Cortés makes it clear that orality and literacy coexist along a continuum, although the Spanish language studies surveyed in this chapter concentrate on the discourse analysis of spoken language corpora. Cortés points out two Spanish-language theoretical works as being relevant to discourse analysis: that of Lavandera, who demonstrated a broad understanding of speech act theory, cohesion and coherence, presupposition and implicature, and related concepts; and that of Lozano, Peña-Marín, and Abril, who produced a manual of discourse analysis (or in their terminology, text semiotics) that by 1999 had been published in six editions.

The chapter also takes up work in the analysis of conversation, speech act theory, and the ethnography of communication. Cortés continues this chapter by introducing the topic of critical discourse analysis, which will be expanded upon in the following chapter. Finally, he concludes chap. 4 by examining the studies produced between 1980 and 1989 that follow models discussed in previous chapters: “classical” quantitative studies, urban sociolinguistics, variationist studies, developmental psycholinguistics, and stylistics.

Chap. 5 (“1990–1999: Estudio de los distintos tipos de discurso oral: géneros, registros, modelos textuales y sociolectos”) begins with the author's review and discussion of discourse typology. He found particularly interesting the history of symposia in Spain and Latin America dedicated to discourse analysis as well as a brief discussion and critique of the role of English as the currently dominant (not to say imperial) language of linguistic and scientific discourse, prefigured by the critical discourse analysis of Teun van Dijk. Additionally, the author discusses the emergence of new Spanish-language journals in discourse analysis and cites other “new media” resources such as Internet websites intended to provide Spanish-speaking scholars and researchers with resources and outlets for their ideas in the area of discourse analysis.

A major section of this chapter called “Discurso y prágmatica” examines the interrelationship of grammar and pragmatics and attends closely to their complementary nature; there is a bit of advocacy for the term “pragmalinguistics” (pragmalingüística) to illustrate this interdependence. Because studies of “courtesy” as a speech act in the Spanish-speaking world occupy the bulk of the literature produced in pragmatics, the author includes comparative studies on bargaining in Nordic and Spanish-speaking countries; customs of courtesy among Mexicans, Swedes, Danes, and Spaniards, etc., and works on attenuation and mitigation.

The section of this chapter with the heading “Discurso y tipología” is the longest of the entire book. It includes reviews and commentary on theoretical and empirical works in the individual areas and subareas of: genre (including conversation, debate, presidential speeches, interviews, and other genres such as joking and arguing), registers (colloquial, technical-journalistic, technical-legal, elaborated-literary), text models (narration, argumentation), and sociolect studies. A short review such as this can only hint at the thoroughness, richness, and depth of treatment given by Cortés to each of these fields. It is in this chapter that the most theoretically sophisticated and nuanced examinations of Spanish oral discourse studies are brought to bear. The author navigates skillfully through the subtleties that have emerged in theory and in practice to delineate, as much as possible, the trends motivating each of the studies cited as noteworthy. He clearly demonstrates a facility for linking antecedent studies with those appearing later, offering ongoing insights that might not be apparent to those less familiar with each of the approaches taken.

The section immediately following the lengthy and detailed “Discurso y tipología” (“Las corrientes cuantitativas: la sociolingüística”) continues the format introduced in previous chapters by examining work that follows earlier models of research (quantitative, sociolinguistics, etc). The last section of the chapter (“El español y su entidad en las gramáticas y en la enseñanaza”) is the least successful of the entire work. The author deals with two separate topics that had not found an appropriate place in previous sections of the book: first, the greater or lesser degree of interest that “oral aspects” of Spanish have had, especially in some grammars designed for foreign learners of Spanish, as well as the degree of interest in “oral aspects” of Spanish in the historiography of the language; and second, teaching oral language and commentary on oral texts. Because these topics break so dramatically – almost shockingly – from the thrust of the book in all other areas and chapters, we believe these two final points would have been better excluded from the text altogether.

Apart from this relatively small cavil, however, this book is undeniably a tour de force of scholarship. The richness, thoroughness, depth, and breadth of its scope and sequence are nothing short of breathtaking. The author demonstrates with equal aplomb his facility with description, assimilation, synthesis, application, and criticism, making this a very satisfying reference that will remain important and relevant for years to come. It will be especially useful for those professionals who wish to gain an overview of sociolinguistic and dialectological approaches to Spanish, as well as for those who wish to broaden their knowledge of discourse analysis and pragmatics. We think with particular envy of those current doctoral students in Spanish linguistics who now have such a wonderful resource available to them.