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Handbook of educational linguisticsRobert Kaplan aa Applied Linguistics, Port Angeles, Washington, DC, USA E-mail:Version of record first published: 21 Apr 2009.

To cite this article: Robert Kaplan (2009): Handbook of educational linguistics, Journal ofMultilingual and Multicultural Development, 30:3, 280-282

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Queen Victoria. As Bouchard states elsewhere, Waitangi Day is a New Zealand

national holiday. Most school children know when it happened!

doi: 10.1080/01434630802597771 James JuppAustralian Demographic and Social Research Institute

Australian National University, Australiajupp@coombs.anu.edu.au

# 2009, James Jupp

Handbook of educational linguistics, edited by Bernard Spolsky and Francis Hult,

Oxford and Boston, Blackwell, 2008, xxii � 675 pp., £95.00/$199.95 (hardback),

ISBN 978-1-4051-5410-9

In the introduction to this book, Spolsky explains the term ‘educational linguistics’:

first named as a field 30 years ago . . . and defined in two introductory books . . .educational linguistics has rapidly expanded and has become widely recognized inreference texts and in university programs and courses . . . I first proposed the term‘educational linguistics’ because of my dissatisfaction with efforts to define the field ofapplied linguistics. (1)

This explanation is supported by citations to Spolsky’s early publications. The claim

for expansion and wide recognition may be debated. Somewhat more realistically,

Spolsky writes, ‘there are probably good pragmatic reasons why the field will never be

fully institutionalised (there are programmes in educational linguistics at only a few

pioneering universities)’ (8).

The bulk of Spolsky’s introduction is reserved for a summary of the 44 articles thatmake up this massive volume. This prefatory text is followed by a chapter on the history

and development of the field, written by co-editor Hult, that essentially attributes the

origin to Spolsky’s ‘seminal’ expression to his 1978 book, Educational Linguistics: An

Introduction. A substantial part of Hult’s argument aims to differentiate ‘educational

linguistics’ from ‘applied linguistics’, trying to show that the former is not just another

name for the latter but, rather, that it is wholly subsumed within it. The differentiation

between the two terms remains somewhat occluded. In the final chapter, Uccelli and

Snow write that while Applied Linguistics is the branch of linguistics that uses linguistic

theory (but not only linguistic theory) to address real-world problems, EducationalLinguistics is the branch of Applied Linguistics that addresses real-world problems in

education (640).

The rest of the book is divided into three sections. In the first (seven chapters), the

foundational background is presented; it draws upon such fields as neurobiology,

linguistic theory, psychology, sociology, anthropology and politics as they apply to

educational linguistics. The central section of the volume comprises 27 chapters in

five clusters: these deal with cultural relevance (six chapters); language policy and

language management (seven); literacy development (four); language acquisition

(five); and assessment (five). The third section contains eight chapters dealing withthe relationship between research and practice.

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Each chapter is accompanied by its own reference list. The book also contains

separate author and subject indices, with the former running to 15 pages and 1380

names. While most authors are cited only once or twice, a number of them are cited

much more frequently � some of these multiple citations, however, derive largely or

wholly from a single chapter. The subject index comprises 1300 entries in 16 double-

column pages. It is probably inappropriate to call attention to absent subjects but,

considering the scope of language teaching in educational linguistics, only some 20

languages are mentioned by name � and the list is perhaps a little surprising: African

American English, Aymara, Black English, Catalan, Ebonics, English, Finno-Ugric,

French, French Sign Language, Hawaiian, Italian, Maori, Mayan, Northern Ute,

Profile Deutsch, Quechua, Romani, Saami, Spanish, Swedish and West African

Pidgin English.

As with any such volume, the whole here is not greater than the sum of its parts �because the parts are quite uneven. One of the contributors shared with me the initial

invitation to contribute. Nowhere in the invitation did the editors indicate a

communal level of difficulty for the intended audience or, indeed, any estimationof what that audience might be (nor is the intended readership discussed in either

Spolsky’s or Hult’s chapters). Nonetheless, the intended audience would seem to be,

at least, those who work in various academic departments and those who train others

to participate in the field. As a consequence, the chapters range from simple

descriptions to sophisticated analyses. The level of some of the writing is appropriate

for undergraduates, but some will prove difficult even for well-versed professionals.

Perhaps the title is misleading. Webster’s defines a ‘handbook’ as ‘a book of reference

to be carried in the hand (surely not this massive 700-page volume); a manual, a

guidebook; e.g., a handbook of geology’ � such a handbook would presumably tell

readers how to do whatever the handbook is about. That is not an accurate

description of this volume, which is rather a gathering of ‘foundational information,

core themes, major findings, and practical applications into one accessible volume’

(dust jacket). In short, it is everything a reader might wish to know about the field � a

bit of hyperbole generated by the publisher.

It is quite impossible to comment on each of the 44 chapters that make up this

volume. As the authors of the final one note, ‘the richness and breadth of the workpresented in this volume emphasises the value of greater clarity about the definition

of educational linguistics, its goals, and the fundamental questions with which it

should grapple’ (640). The authors of Chapter 12 (Reaser and Adger) observe that

‘sociolinguistic findings are highly relevant to education, since there is no doubt that

the major questions in the field . . . underlie issues of social inequity that persist in

education’, and they go on to say that ‘relatively few sociolinguists participate in

education research on language related issues, and fewer still have first-hand

experience in schools, working as or with teachers and administrators’ (166).

McGroarty (the author of Chapter 8) cites Gal and Irvine (1995, 968): ‘our

conceptual tools for understanding linguistic differences still derive from (the)

massive scholarly attempt to create the political differentiation of Europe’ � this,

because the fields of anthropology and linguistics emerged at the end of the

nineteenth century, a time when the legitimization of discrete national states was an

intellectual project of great importance and practical consequences: in short, the one-

nation/one-language myth. Two of the tools employed by individuals to build theirunderstanding of social and linguistic reality were iconicity (the assumption that ‘any

of the linguistic processes of a group are not merely contingent but represent the

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essence of that group’) and erasure (‘the processes in which ideology, in simplifying

linguistic practices, renders some persons or activities or sociolinguistic phenomena

invisible’); Gal and Irvine (1995, 974), again cited in McGroarty’s chapter. Language

attitudes, judgements and behaviour constitute the socially and culturally embedded

metalinguistic forms of language. All users of language necessarily have some

ideologies of language, however inchoate, ideologies that determine choice, evalua-

tion and use of language forms and functions. Political authorities directly

promulgate those language ideologies that are consistent with overarching politicalvalues.

Children come to school speaking one or more languages that they control to

varying degrees of proficiency. Teachers may or may not speak these languages, and

the curriculum may be in a language that neither teacher nor children speak well.

There are some small linguistic communities whose primary language is not used as a

language of instruction at all. Children will reflect the ideologies of their caretakers;

teachers will manifest the ideologies of their age cohort and their educational peers.

These and other serious problems are discussed in the chapters of this volume.Having read sequentially through the entire book � an undertaking few readers

are likely to emulate � I come away marvelling that anyone has the temerity to

undertake language teaching or to have any hope of succeeding in such an activity.

Although I have spent a lifetime in the field, I am still constantly amazed how, in the

face of all the evidence to the contrary, educational administrators around the world

are still happy to promulgate instructional programmes in which the rate of

forgetting is quite likely to exceed the rate of learning, in which time-on-task is so

brief as to virtually ensure fractured acquisition, and in which teacher-training,materials development and achievement assessment are conducted in blissful

ignorance of the accumulated wealth of knowledge about language learning, teaching

and testing. These problems arise in part because the key decision-makers in charge

of the process normally remain largely unaware of the extant research, unfamiliar

with researchers who are experts in the field, and unlikely or unwilling to seek the

advice even of the teachers at the chalk face. One endorses and applauds a book like

this one, in the probably vain hope that teachers, teacher trainers, educational

supervisors and inspectors, politicians and others charged with educational manage-ment at various levels will read it, try and understand it, and attempt to apply its

lessons.

Reference

Gal, S., and J. Irvine. 1995. The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologiesconstruct difference. Social Research 62, no. 4: 967�1001.

doi: 10.1080/01434630802597813 Robert KaplanApplied Linguistics,

Port Angeles, Washington, DC, USArkaplan@olypen.com

# 2009, Robert Kaplan

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