Baker, C & questions Jones, S. (Ed...

Baker, C & questions Jones, S. (Eds.) ( 1998) Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

Some 35 years ago, when the two I and the sociology of language were still quite young, I conceived of an international encyclopedia of bilingualism and originate a prospective publisher who was interested in bringing it revealed After a few months of planning, it became evident that it would have to be longer topically more tangle and involve more contributing specialists than either of us (i.e., either the prospective publisher or I) could handle. Those were the days when massive compendia had solely just begun to appear in the language sciences and professions (Mouton's popular Trends in Linguistics, under Thomas Sebeok's masterful editorship, was the first to arrive) and no single in kind with whom I discussed the matter looked to believe that I should have an associate or an assistant in order to tackle the enterprise. Initially, no common myself included, really fully understood the dimensions of the do job-work and within a few month when the fact had dawned on me, I withdrew as gracefully as I could from the task that I had risk for myself. Now Colin Baker and Sylvia scrutinizes Jones have accomplished what had appeared to me to be the impossible, albeit with a gratifyingly large staff of assistants, consulting editors, topical advisers, and financial "providers." However, not sole have they "covered" bilingualism, on the contrary bilingual education as well (something which had hardly surfaced [or resurfaced] in the public sector in the United States in 1968 on the other hand was just about to do likewise via the [in]famous Title VII).

The work is beautifully published, in large format and with a dazzling plentitude of maps, photos, graphs, and charts in many different colors. It is a singular achievement and undivided with which. the editors can justly be stately even if they never publish another thing (which knowing them as 1 do, happily won't be the case at all).

Organization of the Encyclopedia

After five pages of foreword, preface, acknowledgements, and a launch off in Welsh and English via three englynion, "a traditional Welsh four line metrical composition form ... composed of alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme" (p x) the hefty 758-page convolution starts off with a 94-page Section 1 devot to Individual Bilingualism. Section 2 consists of 248 pages devot to Languages in Society and is correlativeed by another 116 pages in Section 3 dealing with Languages in Contact in the World. Section 4 forward bilingual education, is 232 pages lengthy In conclusion, there are several Appendixes requiring another 60 pages. All in all, there is a great deal here for everyone and greatest in number particularly, for those interested in sociolinguistic matters, since the one and the other sections 2 and 3 pertain to this broad topical area, making it the longest in the compass if the two are considered together.

Actually, the section headings mentioned above guard more than some might rely upon to find in connection with them. Thus, Section 2 includes more than 50 pages in succession Language Change, covering such matters as "The Origins of Language and Language Families" and "Dialects and Language Boundaries." This same section also includes the topic "Language Shift, Language Decline, and Language Death," as well as the topic "Attitudes to Languages." a certain may also be surprised to find that "Bilingualism and secondary Language Acquisition" is located subject to Section 4 ("Bilingual Education") rather than in Section 1 ("Individual Bilingualism"). Clearly, "placement problems" of this kind would have been avoided had the bulk been organized alphabetically rather than thematically, unless the latter choice was undoubtedly the better individual since it tends to form into groups related topics together and makes the volume a pleasure to read (ye just to read straight within like a novel or textbook rather than just the usual encyclopedia). Clearly, about attention has to be paid in a turn such as this to linguistics by se, on the one hand, and to language attitudes in succession the other hand, and although the actual placement of these topics may appear to be somewhat startling, the narrative stream is really quite smooth and the topics generally amalgamate one into the other without cognitive strain or arbitrariness. Baker and peeps Jones are great teachers, and reading them makes undivided want to observe them in a classroom.

Section 4 forward "Languages in Contact in the World" is actually organized geographically (by continents and regions), rather than on languages, thus making it easier to use for answering questions like "What are the main languages of Mozambique?" than to answer questions like "Where is Amharic and what are its problems?" For questions of the latter kind, common would need to consult the Index to find the various places in the whirl where any particular language is mentioned (a totally acceptable, if les parsimonious, approach to answering the question). The turn is also provided with abundant quotations and examples, plant off in colored boxes, and further readings are mentioned after most numerous entries (and mentioned in abounding bibliographic detail), so that the same need not constantly turn to the bibliography appendix at the close of the book while reading any particular article.