Stephen J. Caldas, Raising bilingual-biliterate children in monolingual cultures. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2006. Pp. xvi, 231. Pb. $39.95.

This is the fascinating story of the author's own family project of raising his three children French-English bilingually in English-speaking Louisiana. Caldas, a French-English bilingual himself, and his bilingual French-Canadian wife artificially orchestrate and manipulate the children's environments from birth to adolescence to ensure that the children develop full bilingual proficiency and biliteracy in French and English. Caldas's and his wife's main strategy is to speak only French to their son and their identical twin daughters. They also commit to use only French with each other, thus creating an all-French-speaking home environment. The Caldases also enroll the children in French immersion school and make extensive use of French-language media to further expose the children to French. Finally, the author and his wife purchase a cottage in Quebec where they spend the summers, providing the children with authentic societal language immersion. The outcome of this extraordinary experiment is that, by adolescence, all three children are completely bilingual and biliterate in French and English and can be easily mistaken as native speakers of both Quebecois French and American English.

Fred Genesee, Katheryn Lindholm-Leary, William M. Saunders, and Donna Christian (eds.), Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 245. Pb $24.99.

Educating English language learners appeared as a result of a U.S. government-funded project in an attempt to synthesize “research on the relationship among oral language, literacy, and academic achievement for English language learners (ELLs) in the United States” (1). Referring to what Donna Christian calls “educational facts” (1) about the lower academic ability of students with limited English proficiency, and placing institutionalized academic achievement at the center of their discussions, the contributors review three databases and a number of journals of language and education. They explore research trends in the education of English as a second language in the past 20 years, how research findings have been applied in U.S. schools, and possible future research directions.

Alison Sealey and Bob Carter, Applied linguistics as social science. New York: Continuum, 2004. Pp. xv, 239. Pb $49.95.

Applied linguistics as social science underscores the essential association between language and society and attempts “to make a case for regarding the discipline of applied linguistics as a social science” (1). Although Sealey and Carter are not bringing up the issue for the first time (despite the impression that the book seems to be giving), highlighting and reiterating the social and cultural nature of language in general and applied language studies in particular could be considered the major contribution of the book.

Kory Floyd, Communicating affection: Interpersonal behaviour and social context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 222. Hb $80.00

Kory Floyd sets out to establish a comprehensive theory of affectionate communication. The text discusses the bioevolutionary and sociocultural paradigms of affectionate communication as well as related empirical knowledge in order to present a thorough theory of the subject at hand. At the outset, considering the complexity and wide-ranging nature of the phenomena of communication and affection, the task appears to be overwhelmingly ambitious. However, through detailed and well-outlined argumentation, the author manages to delineate an interesting and thought-provoking framework for future research.

Publications received (through 30 March 2007).