This slender volume is offered as an introductory text on this topic, presumably to university undergraduates. In the Introduction, Martínez states: “Mexican Americans and language offers a linguistic overview of some of the central issues in the Mexican American language experience [emphasis in original], giving students the background needed to respond to the multiple social problems that interface with the language differences that exist in the Mexican American minority population” (p. ix). The goals of the book thus explained, in the final paragraph of the Introduction the author reveals the conversational style that he will take for the rest of the chapters, using second person for the reader and first person for the author: “After reading this book I hope you will be able to bridge the gap between el dicho (saying) and el hecho (doing) and will be able to look at the Mexican American language experience in a way that will encourage you to seek out change and improvement for the Mexican American communities that exist throughout the United States” (xi). On the face of it, this style may intend to make the academic content to follow less intimidating to students unused to reading challenging texts and academic jargon. However, it also makes for a very personalized approach to the issues that he addresses, a type of “critical discourse” in effect, in which his interpretation of the research presented appears not to be open to dissension or debate.

The organization of the book is straightforward: six full chapters on various aspects of the language issues that Mexican Americans face today, and one rather scant final chapter that serves as a conclusion. Each chapter is followed by comprehension questions, called “Discussion Exercises,” which in some cases are, in fact, intended for discussion. Interspersed in the chapters are “Topic Highlights,” supplementary sections set apart in shaded sidebars that are pertinent to the chapter's topic and easy to read and digest quickly. At the end of each chapter the author presents “Suggested Readings.” The Conclusion is followed by a four-page glossary, a seven-page bibliography, and an index.

While the book's organization may be conventional, its content is not. Unlike previous books on this topic in the textbook genre, it is not merely a noncommittal synthesis of previous research as in Peñalosa 1980 or Ramírez 1992, nor a singleminded treatise on socialist theory and language as presented by Sánchez 1994 [1983]. This textbook selects among many articles written on the topic of each chapter, in some cases summarizing them, in others selecting some aspects of the original author's research but not others, and in this way shaping the data upon which Martínez may draw conclusions for the student reader. With regard to some topics, this approach works well; with others, it presents this author's point of view too forcefully for an introductory textbook.

The discussion of a few of the chapters will serve to support this. Chapter 1, “Language ideologies,” is a competent treatment of bilingualism in current linguistic thought as well as its application to the Mexican American bilingual Spanish-English experience. In fact, it provides the vocabulary to discuss the age-old opposition between the dominant language and the minority language. However, the introduction of the term “language panic,” proposed by Hill 2001, is by no means uncontroversial. Martínez says that “I understand language panics in a broader and more continuous sense than a heightened emotional concern about technical linguistic issues at particular historical junctures” (12). And he states further, “[these] serve as instances in which ‘whiteness’ and its signatory, indexical language, plain English, are elevated. At the same time, they represent racialized others as a problem.” However, as a fluent Mexican American bilingual, I consider that what Hill calls “mock Spanish,” such as Hasta la vista, Baby, does not index “violence,” “subservience,” “hypersexuality,” or “laziness” (Martínez, 12) any more than English does more pervasively; rather, the switch marks and underscores the message. That Spanish is used acknowledges a bilingual audience rather than assuming a monolingual one. Further, constructs such as “language panic” and “language pride” are by no means accepted in the field, yet students are being asked in the Discussion Exercises questions such as “Identify and describe three constitutive elements of language panics” (18). That these ideas might be controversial should invite students to question them or to relate them to their own experience rather than to presuppose them.

Chap. 2, “Language attitudes,” attempts not only to explain attitudes but also to contrast them with language ideologies. This is no small task, for these are complex issues in and of themselves. Martínez's discussion includes attitudes about language and identity, about the evaluation of local Spanish and code-switching, and about language maintenance. Bringing these various strands of inquiry together is ambitious but sometimes confusing. Perhaps this is due to the denseness of the prose: “Such oppositions show how the I and the Other intersect with community and individuality and, thus, unfold in a basic ideological tension between language pride and language panic” (38). Chap. 3 presents a competent discussion of language maintenance and shift in the Mexican American community, adding recent immigrants to the mix as they “counteract ongoing processes of shift within and across generations” (55).

Chap. 4, on Mexican American Spanish, also presents challenging prose: “Social discontinuities emerge as counter-hegemonic discourses that challenge the asymmetrical social relations perceived in the relationship between the Mexican American minority and the European American majority” (71). More problematic are this author's perspectives on prior research. With regard to caló, Martínez states: “Chicano caló is often recognized as the characteristic language of criminals in the Southwest. The earliest scientific research on caló seemed to reinforce this stereotype” (71). My own recent research on gitano caló and Pachuco talk shows that its origins do involve the criminal elements of Spanish speakers in Spain, Mexico, and the United States (García 2005), and that similar types of argots are employed even today in Mexico (Spanish-based) and in the United States (English-based) in criminal and gang populations. The fact that many words known to the Pachucos of the 1940s and 1950s are now widely used in the Mexican American community by law-abiding citizens in all walks of life is not an indication that their criminal origins are not factual (i.e., a “stereotype”), but rather that they have gained covert prestige in the community and now function as markers of Chicano identity (Garcia 2005). In fact, many early scholars also discounted this variety's categorization as solely a criminal argot, commenting on its use by those not in gangs – for instance, deeming it “a mark of sophistication among many boys of Mexican descent in Tucson” (Barker 1975:199), or an “inoffensive jargon” in El Paso (Coltharp 1965:30), or commenting that “much of its vocabulary has become respectable enough at least for informal male discourse” (Ornstein 1973:75). While I agree with Martínez that “Chicano caló is a counter-hegemonic discourse that uses verbal behavior to mark out specific spaces as belonging to Chicanos” (74), it is a disservice to both the field and to the readers of this textbook to discredit early research that links its origins, accurately, to a criminal element, no matter how politically incorrect such an observation may be.

Commenting briefly on the remaining two full chapters, I will point out that in chap. 5 Martínez criticizes early treatments of Mexican American English for focusing on its linguistic characteristics and influences from Spanish rather than on “the multiple ways in which individual speakers use the language to meet their communicative needs” (79). Because both types of objectives are legitimate goals of sociolinguistics, blaming an apple for not being an orange seems rather pointless. Moreover, there is a lack of clarity in the prose as to whether this English is one variety or many. The author mentions the many sources of “Mexican American English” but does not speak of how local norms may be more cohesive than regional ones. While he mentions “the complexity of the dialect” (91), the states of Texas and California are treated as if each had its own single, homogeneous variety (91). With regard to one feature, the prose reads as if a pronunciation in one speech community were typical of all (91). Chap. 6, on code-switching, presents coherent explanations of the linguistic skill needed to perform it, of the inter- versus intrasentential types, and of the matrix language model. A nice range of studies is discussed, some classic and some new. However, as is symptomatic of the textbook in general, Valdés's useful typology of code-switching functions (1982:213) is presented only in part, giving students only a partial understanding of this article while leaving instructors possibly unfamiliar with the field to fill in the gaps.

There are occasional errors of fact, such as the attribution of refinar ‘to eat’ (72) and jainita ‘girlfriend’ (73) to English borrowings. In fact, they come from Spanish and Romany, respectively (Ortega 1991). Finally, I see that several of the references used by Martínez in this volume are not given with their original publication dates. The limited availability of original publications often makes it necessary to use an article or volume in reprinted form, but to give an accurate overview of the evolution of the field, the original publication date as well as that of the subsequent reprint used should be documented.

In sum, despite the fact that this type of textbook is long overdue, I hesitate to endorse this one. The critical perspective employed by the author seems a personal one not representative of the field. Moreover, the selectivity of articles summarized, the introduction of terminology not widely accepted by fellow linguists, and some disturbing inaccuracies are contrary to what should be expected of a good introductory textbook.