Judging from the varied and stimulating content of this anthology, the Third International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (held in September 2003 at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) must have been an exciting experience for theorists and teachers in the field of SLA. This volume—a collection of selected papers from the conference—pays eloquent testimony to the success of the academic gathering.
Sensibly, the editors have decided to frame the essay collection with a three-part introduction that helps to clarify the volume's theoretical and pragmatic agenda. Key, controlling ideas are quickly and efficiently established: “language is first and foremost a means of human communication in sociocultural and psychological contexts” (p. 4); the value of contrastive linguistics is its “conclusive demonstration that knowledge of difference/similarity contributes to better translations, [and] greater accuracy and fluency in L1 and L2” (p. 30); and “the majority of the studies reported here are empirical in nature, many making use of corpus materials in the language(s) under investigation” (p. 53).
The body of the volume consists of 15 essays. Most are, indeed, empirical in nature, although there are two prominent exceptions. The first is Chafe's theoretical study, “The Relation of Grammar to Thought,” in which he investigates the sequence of cognitive activity among thoughts, semantics, grammar, phonology, and sounds. Butler provides an essay, “Formulaic Language: An Overview with Particular Reference to the Cross-linguistic Perspective,” in which he uses set idioms in English and Spanish to explore “the balance between formulaicity and creativity” (p. 239) in language use, drawing some important lessons for the teaching and learning of second languages.
It is only natural (given the geographical location of the conference) that several of the essays emphasize contrastive linguistic functions between English and Spanish. Among the topics analyzed in this Anglo-Spanish cross-cultural approach are clefting, the use of anaphoric terms, lexical competence for second language learners, timing sequences, and intonation patterns. These essays are likely to appeal more to teachers and theorists who work predominantly with Spanish and English learners, although those with other cultural areas of specialization will not necessarily feel excluded.
Perhaps the biggest (and, in a sense, most pleasant) surprises from this volume come from reading the two essays with titles that seem the least relevant. It might seem strange, in a volume such as this, to include essays on television football (soccer) commentary and on the mid-19th-century proceedings of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language. However, both make valuable, probing contributions to the volume's pragmatic purpose. Mackenzie's “Incremental Functional Grammar and the Language of Football Commentary” investigates the effect of “time pressure” on the utterances of TV football commentators: specifically, how the complexity of phrasal and clausal structure is affected by the speed and intensity of the action being reported from the field. Even though the implications for SLA are not spelled out directly, they can be deduced fairly easily from the essay. Caller's chapter, “English Consciousness in 19th-Century Spain,” serves as the concluding essay for the anthology. Again, at first sight, this might seem slightly incongruous, as the essay is clearly intended to be an historical overview of 19th-century archives belonging to the Spanish Royal Academy of Language. Yet, the author manages to push her analysis to an intriguing conclusion: that the English language was perceived in the politically and culturally conservative Spain of the 19th century as being open to change, newness, and modernity, hence hinting at its future status as the language of globalization. It provides an interesting, fitting twist to the ending of an informative volume on functional and contrastive linguistics.
