37.3052, Reviews: Language and Social Issues: Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson; Shiloh Drake; Amy Fountain (2026)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3052. Wed Sep 23 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3052, Reviews: Language and Social Issues: Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson; Shiloh Drake; Amy Fountain (2026)

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Date: 23-Sep-2026
From: Mateja Lasnik [mateja.lasnik3 at gmail.com]
Subject: Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson; Shiloh Drake; Amy Fountain (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-1155

Title: Language and Social Issues
Subtitle: An Investigator's Toolkit
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/language-and-social-issues-investigators-toolkit?format=HB&isbn=9781108837200

Author(s): Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson; Shiloh Drake; Amy Fountain

Reviewer: Mateja Lasnik

SUMMARY
The book “Language and Social Issues: An Investigator’s Toolkit”,
published by Cambridge University Press in 2026, is written by
Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson, Shiloh Drake, and Amy Fountain. It provides
an overview of linguistics, introduces tools for linguistic analysis
and research ethics, and explores a wide range of linguistic topics,
including language development in infants, language use in classrooms,
language and artificial intelligence, language and gender, and many
others.
The book will be particularly useful for students beginning their
study of linguistics, as well as instructors teaching courses such as
Language and Society, Introduction to Linguistics, and
Sociolinguistics. It can also serve effectively as supplementary
material in these courses. One of the book’s strengths is its strong
emphasis on practical and classroom-based activities. Each chapter
concludes with a section containing activities that can be used
directly during class sessions, as well as additional activities that
can be adapted for homework, projects, or other assignments. Each
chapter contains recommended readings and ends with a glossary of key
terms introduced in the chapter. In addition, the book contains a
country index and a language index listing all the countries and
languages mentioned in the book, as well as the main index.
Chapter One provides a brief introduction to the book by discussing
the meaning of “a linguist,” language as one of the systems of
communication, and the existence of linguistic varieties, dialects,
accents, and registers or styles. The chapter encourages readers to
use linguistic tools in the analysis of language, such as the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and concludes with an overview
of the book’s chapters.
Chapter Two provides a broad overview of what linguistics is and what
it covers. It explains the meanings of the terms “linguistics” and
“language” and includes examples comparing nonhuman animal
communication with human communication. It then provides a separate
introduction to the different subcomponents of linguistics, such as
phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, semantics and
pragmatics, as well as conversation and discourse analysis.
Chapter Three introduces students to the tools they can use to study
linguistic phenomena in relation to social issues. The tools are
divided into two sections: tools for making observations and tools for
analyzing observations. The section on tools for making observations
includes elicitation and grammaticality judgments, as well as the
sociolinguistic interview (Labov, 1966). This section also introduces
corpora and collections, with special focus on the Corpus of
Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008–), or COCA. The second
section focuses on tools for analyzing observations, including
phonetic and signed-language transcription, the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA), multi-line glossing, conversation and interview
transcription, and corpus analysis using COCA and Google Ngram Viewer.
Chapter Four focuses on ethics in conducting linguistic research. It
explains the key principles of research involving human subjects, with
a special section devoted to guidelines for using social media to
collect data online (Townsend and Wallace, 2017). The chapter also
explains plagiarism and provides an introduction to referencing and
citation, including the use of AI tools, as well as intellectual
property and copyright.
Chapter Five introduces various topics, including the influence that
languages have on each other, and the terms diglossia, code-switching,
and translanguaging. It also discusses the emergence of new languages,
such as blended varieties of languages. The terms, such as pidgin and
creole, are also explained, and sections are devoted to
multilingualism in the Maghreb and the Vaupés. The chapter concludes
with examples of the US, Canada, and Australia wiping out other
languages from their traditional homelands.
Chapter Six focuses on language development in babies and presents a
typical timeline of language acquisition. The later sections provide a
more detailed description of what takes place during each stage of
language acquisition. One section also focuses on language
socialization, examining how adults interact with babies and how these
interactions influence children’s language development. The chapter
provides examples from studies of US American families, as well as
examples from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Southern Mexico, and the
Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Chapter Seven focuses on computational linguistics and the development
of artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs). It
provides examples of specific Google searches and their autocomplete
suggestions, introduces the basics of natural language processing
(NLP), and explains how NLP systems work. The chapter also discusses
how machines determine meaning through vector semantics. It concludes
with different types of language technologies, including optical
character recognition systems, spam filters and search engines,
sentiment analyzers, and predictive text generators and chatbots.
Chapter Eight focuses on language use in classrooms and discusses how
schools can either inhibit or promote language use. It provides
examples of the existence of a “standard language” in North American
schools and explores how linguistic varieties are differentially
valued. The chapter also addresses anti-Black racism in US classrooms,
where varieties of language may be viewed as inferior to what April
Baker-Bell (2020) terms “White Mainstream English. The chapter also
highlights positive examples of schools supporting linguistic
diversity, including Māori immersion schools in New Zealand,
Hawaiian-language education in Hawaiʻi, and Sámi language initiatives
in Europe.
Chapter Nine explores how people use language to construct and express
gender identities. It begins by examining grammatical gender across
different Indo-European languages, followed by a substantial
discussion of gendered language use, drawing on Robin Lakoff’s
Language and Woman’s Place (1973) and work on men’s language use
(e.g., Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2013). The final section examines
how sexuality and sexual identities can be expressed through language.
Chapter Ten examines the relationship between language use and access
to employment. It also explores multilingualism in the job market and
the connections between language use and socioeconomic class (e.g.,
Labov, 2006). The final part of the chapter discusses the importance
of language use in marketing, linguistic commodification, and
linguistic landscapes.
Chapter Eleven focuses on linguistic discrimination in employment and
housing. It also examines how linguistic style can influence
perceptions of credibility in the courtroom. Another section discusses
challenges in language transcription, particularly how transcribers’
language ideologies can shape their transcription practices. The final
part addresses linguistic discrimination across different modalities
of language, with a particular focus on signed languages.
Chapter Twelve discusses how language has been used to create national
identities. It provides a brief history of English as a major language
of colonization and explores the effects of colonization in the United
States on Indigenous languages, as well as the impact of other
dominant languages on minority languages. The chapter also discusses
Esperanto, an invented “universal” language, focusing on its creation,
promotion, and reception. It concludes by considering the potential of
languages to serve as instruments of peace.
EVALUATION
A key strength of “Language and Social Issues: An Investigator’s
Toolkit” is its practical approach. As its title suggests, it equips
students to become linguistic investigators. From Chapter 2 onwards,
each chapter concludes with two subsections: “Linguists in the
Community” and “Linguists in the Classroom.” The former offers
linguistic tasks related to the chapter topic that students can
conduct in their communities, while the latter provides
classroom-based activities that allow students to apply the concepts
discussed in the chapter.
The book presents linguistic concepts clearly and provides students
with practical tools for exploring language. Chapter 2 provides a
useful introduction to linguistics, including an overview of the
discipline and its main branches. The concepts are presented in clear
and accessible language, which can help students develop an interest
in linguistics. I also particularly liked Chapter 3, “We Have a
Starter Kit for You,” because of its practical approach to introducing
students to tools for making and analyzing linguistic observations.
Practical examples, such as screenshots from the Corpus of
Contemporary American English (COCA) and Google Ngram Viewer, can help
students better understand how corpora can be used both to make
observations and to analyze linguistic data. I also appreciate that
the book draws on examples from a wide range of languages, although
examples from the United States are particularly prominent.
While the activities provided at the end of each chapter are a strong
feature of the book, I would additionally suggest including a list of
discussion questions for each chapter. It could also be useful to
provide a list of web links to relevant videos, additional materials,
and some of the linguistic tools mentioned in the book.
One potential weakness is that, while the book uses very accessible
language to explain the concepts and does this very successfully, the
Table of Contents and the titles of each chapter are also written in a
similarly informal style. This may make it difficult for both the
course instructor and the students to identify the main theories and
topics covered in each chapter. For example, the chapters have titles
such as “Languages Go to School,” “Languages Get a Job, Get Rich,”
“Languages Get Fired, Get Arrested, Go to Jail,” “Languages Go to
War,” and “Languages Make Peace.” It would be useful to provide a
short, more formal description alongside these titles to clarify the
main topics and theories covered in each chapter. Additionally, the
main theories and concepts could also be listed at the beginning of
each chapter.
Another minor drawback is that some of the studies discussed in the
book are relatively old, dating from the 1970s and 1980s. However,
many of these are interesting and important studies, so I would not
necessarily consider this a significant weakness. Instead, their
inclusion could encourage researchers to conduct new studies building
on these earlier examples.
All in all, the book is a fun and engaging read. It is written in
simple and easy-to-understand language, and I believe it could attract
students who are new to linguistics, particularly students interested
in the relationship between language and social issues.
REFERENCES
Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy,
Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge.
Davies, M. (2008–). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
[Data set]. www.english-corpora.org/coca/
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and Gender (1st
ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Labov, W. (1966). The effect of social mobility on linguistic
behavior. Sociological Inquiry, 36(2), 186–203.
https://doi.org/10/fbqf5g
Labov, W. (2006). The Social Stratification of English in New York
City (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society,
2(1), 45–80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000051
Townsend, L., & Wallace, C. (2017). The ethics of using social media
data in research: A new framework. In K. Woodfield (Ed.), The Ethics
of Online Research (Vol. 2, pp. 189–207). Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Mateja Lasnik earned her PhD in Linguistics from National Taiwan
University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at National
Pingtung University. Her research focuses on language and gender,
emotions, metaphor, and the relationship between language and culture.
She has published in Cognitive Linguistic Studies (2023) and the
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Cognitive Linguistics (forthcoming).
AI USAGE
A limited AI tool was used for minor grammar and style suggestions;
all content and opinions are the author’s own.



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