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Book Reviews
The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism. Li Wei and
Melissa G. Moyer, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. xvi + 399 pp.

KATHE MANAGAN
Louisiana State University

Wei and Moyer’s Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism contains
exceptionally practical information for students constructing their first research projects and
also provides new ideas for more experienced scholars. The book is very well organized and
contains section and sometimes even chapter summaries for those wishing to obtain an over-
view of the material quickly. Another strength of the book is its breadth, both in terms of
disciplinary focus and in terms of topics covered. The book is addressed to a wide audience of
scholars studying language in bilingual and multilingual contexts. Linguistic anthropologists
will be happy to find that while the book’s contributors address formal linguistic approaches to
language and to research methodology, they also present linguistic anthropological and socio-
linguistic approaches and consider ethnographic and other types of qualitative methodology
along with quantitative methods. The editors manage to present many varied perspectives on
research about bi- and multilingualism and code-switching, noting the advantages and limita-
tions, along with their basic assumptions. In this way, no one particular approach is favored.
Wei and Moyer’s volume, which contains 22 chapters, is divided into three sections. The first
section, “Researching Bilingualism and Multilingualism,” provides an overview of research
perspectives and methods that are used by a wide variety of scholars who work on bilingual-
ism and multilingualism. These chapters would be especially useful for a beginning graduate
student who is new to this broad field of study or anyone who would like a concise, but
comprehensive, view of the different approaches to multilingualism. The first chapter, by Wei,
covers the history of research on bi- and multilingualism, from the 17th century to the present.
The second chapter, by Moyer, addresses how one goes about designing a research project,
stressing that one’s choice of research design is interrelated with one’s research questions and
the theoretical frameworks with which one is in dialogue. Moyer seems to assume that readers
are coming to this chapter with a completely open mind and without any subdisciplinary
biases or constraints, which is rarely what happens in practice. Nonetheless, this approach
would be especially beneficial for students and may help those of us who have become
entrenched in certain ways of thinking to consider the benefits of other perspectives.
The second section of the book, “Procedures, Methods, and Tools,” includes several wide-
ranging chapters that address considerations of research design and theory in more detail. This
section has something to offer everyone. Nortier explores the different types of data that can be
used in research on bilingualism and the sources for such data, including naturally occurring
speech, elicitation, books, song lyrics, and the internet. Gardner-Chloros discusses the levels of
analysis and types of classification often used in the analysis of bilingual data. This chapter
explores different types of code-switching and diverse approaches to analyzing these phenom-
ena, ranging from grammatical approaches, such as Myers-Scotton’s “Matrix Language Frame”
to sociolinguistic and pragmatic approaches. Lanza’s chapter examines how one should go
about selecting research sites and participants, bearing in mind that context plays a crucial role
in the types of data gathered, which in turn impacts on the types of research questions that can
be answered. Lanza’s chapter also includes a sample consent form, to which beginning
researchers could refer. Hua and David provide a discussion of research design, focusing on
cross-sectional, longitudinal, case and group studies. The authors explain each type of study
and examine their benefits and limitations. The chapter by Kroll, Gerfen, and Dussias focuses
on laboratory design, which would be most useful for those interested in a psycholinguistic or
cognitive approach to multilingualism. Abutalebi and Della Rosa’s contribution examines

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 23, Issue 1, pp. 96–111, ISSN 1055-1360, EISSN 1548-1395. © 2013
by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1395.2013.01090.x.

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Book Reviews 97

imaging technologies used to study bilingualism from a neurological perspective. Codó dis-
cusses the use of interviews and questionnaires as data collection techniques. Clemente pro-
vides an overview of how to record audio and video data, including the types of equipment
and software available for recording and analysis. Given how often this topic comes up on
various listservs used by linguistic anthropologists, this rich overview will come in handy (at
least until newer technology emerges). Turell and Moyer provide a chapter on transcription,
which includes practical advice on software one might use. The chapter focuses, however, on
the LIDES system (LIDES stands for Language Interaction Data Exchange System) for tran-
scription and coding. Tokowicz and Warren discuss quantitative approaches to multilingual
research. Backus examines the use of data banks and corpora. Daming, Xiaomei, and Wei
consider social network analysis and its application to research on multilingualism.
The second section of this Blackwell guide also includes an excellent chapter on conducting
ethnographic fieldwork, written by Monica Heller, which would be of particular interest to
readers of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. In that chapter, Heller explains what ethno-
graphic research is, lays out the basic premises of linguistic anthropology (namely that speech,
including that of bilingual and multilingual persons, is a social practice that is embedded in,
influenced by and contributes to broader social processes). Heller mentions different method-
ologies used in ethnographic research, considering their advantages and limitations, advocates
the use of multiple methods in any given research project, and concludes the chapter with an
example of research she carried out in a high school in Quebec. Linguistic anthropologists may
also find particularly useful the chapters on conversation and interactional analysis (by
Cashman), on Critical Discourse Analysis (by Blackledge) and on narrative analysis (by Pav-
lenko). The chapter on media analysis, by Purvis, sounds promising; however, it fails to offer
much insight into the kinds of research carried out by most linguistic anthropologists who
conduct some type of media analysis. Rather than examining multilingual language use in
media, the chapter focuses on the study of media (especially in Britain) to understand how
bilingualism is represented in the media. Although Purvis mentions studies of media con-
sumption, his suggestions for carrying out research focus primarily on textual analysis of
media products with some consideration of power relations and the economics of production.
Important work by scholars of language and media such as Debra Spitulnik receives no
mention in this chapter.
The final section of the guide, “Project Ideas, Dissemination and Resources,” includes three
chapters, all written by the editors Wei and Moyer, that address the needs of junior scholars
and those planning new research. There is an extremely practical chapter on project ideas,
many of them innovative. This chapter also presents research questions and methods, targeted
for subdisciplines such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, along with interdisciplinary
approaches. These questions and methods are all designed to address a few key topics that one
might find in current calls for proposals from funding agencies, namely conflict, change,
migration and children. There is another very useful chapter in section three that deals with
how to go about disseminating research, offering advice to junior scholars on presenting
research at conferences and getting their research published. This chapter in particular would
be helpful to any graduate student, not simply those working on bi- or multilingualism. The
final chapter in section three includes a list of journals, book series, conferences, research tools
and internet sources that might be of use for anyone interested in research on multilingualism.
While this guide is exemplary in its breadth, it does have some drawbacks. The writing is at
times repetitive and the content covers material that scholars already familiar with this field of
study would not need. Also, the contexts of research are fairly limited, with chapters focusing
especially on data collected in Britain and Europe where multilingualism is associated with
migration and with issues of national belonging. Despite these weaknesses, overall this is an
indispensable book for any scholar of multilingualism. Those seeking an introduction to
research and theory on bi- and multilingualism will want to go beyond this textbook, and the
suggestions for further reading included with each chapter will help them do that.
In summary, I can think of no other text that offers such a wide range of practical advise for
actually carrying out research. This guide will find a place in courses on bi- and multilingual-
ism, in linguistic field methods and even ethnographic methods courses, as well as on the
shelves of university libraries and scholars interested in this subject.

Department of Geography and Anthropology