While virtually all sex education books for teenagers focus on sexual health, Jo Langford's "The Sex EDcyclopedia" offers comprehensive and empowering information specifically for teen males about their sexuality and how it may be positively experienced. This review examines the strengths of "The Sex EDcyclopedia" as a sex education resource and…

Reviews and discusses Bill Bryson's book "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" and recommends it as enjoyable scholarly book for communication professionals who want to learn about the English language or refresh their knowledge of it. (SR)

This compact and well-written book considers multiple language use, some of its quantitative aspects, how people feel about multiple languages, and what society should or might do about multiple language problems. A list of comments, criticisms, and suggestions for revision is included with this largely favorable review. (SLD)

Reviews a book that emphasizes the role of families in maintaining minority languages and, ultimately, cultures. The book sees efforts to preserve and restore minority languages as societal reform efforts that lead to appreciation of other cultures as well. Three sections cover introductory considerations, case studies of threatened languages, and…

Reviews three books with the common theme that the way language operates in connection with juridical processes of various kinds gives ground for complaint. A subsidiary theme is that academic language studies might, in some cases, provide the appropriate theoretical underpinnings for the examination of the problems in question, and perhaps lead…

Two books are reviewed: "The Discourse of Advertising," by Guy Cook, and "Competing Discourses, Perspectives and Ideology in Language," by David Lee. Each focuses on several issues central to discourse studies as the catalyst of critical thought and critique of traditional methods in language and linguistics. (Contains one…

Reviews William Lutz's book "Doublespeak: From 'Revenue Enhancement' to 'Terminal Living'--How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You." (KEH)

Examines "Grammaticalization" (P. J. Hopper and E. C. Traugott), a linguistics textbook that focuses on the establishment of grammaticalization as both a process and a topic. Argues that the significance of the work is that it offers a genuine attempt to explain linguistic change in terms of a realistic conception of what is actually…

In Japanese society, it is inevitable to use polite expressions in public. Adult Japanese must use polite expressions whenever they meet anybody for the first time. Hence, it is possible to say that all adult Japanese know the usage of politeness vaguely, but not clearly. It is because they learn it through socializing with others. An examination…

"Analysing Genre," by Vijay K. Bhatia, is a timely addition to the literature on genre analysis in English for specific purposes. It is divided into three parts: the first provides theoretical background; the second explains how genre analysis works in different academic and professional settings; and the third exemplifies the…

Reviews "Writing the Rural," five "cultural geographies" by Paul Cloke, Marcus Doel, David Matless, Martin Phillips, and Nigel Thrift that focus on proliferating meanings of "rural" and on understanding the "rural" as something fashioned by both rural residents and various outside actors. Highlights the…