LINGUIST List 12.284

Thu Feb 1 2001

Review: Authors' response to 12.166

Editor for this issue: Terence Langendoen <terrylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Cenoz Iragui Jasone, Authors' response to 12.166, Review of Cenoz & Jessner

After reading several messages from European colleagues regarding Malcolm
Finney's review of our book on English in Europe we feel the need to
respond. In particular we would like to express our opinion on the
following part of the review:

"I find the text a bit narrow in focus. Most of the authors (13 out of 16)
are affiliated with European educational institutions. The primary focus
of the text is on the development of trilingual competence and trilingual
education in a few European countries. The implications for multilingual
education outside of Europe are limited."

Since our book is focused on the specific sociolinguistic situation of
continental English which is often learnt as an L3 it can be seen as
unavoidable or if you want even as a necessary prerequisite that such a
volume includes mainly contributions from European scholars working
European institutions.

Compiling this volume represented a very difficult task since research on
English as L3 is still very limited but represents an increasing
phenomenon all over the world. The study of English as a third language in
Europe has obvious implications for other contexts and the relevance of
the research for other international settings is implicit as expressed in
the introduction and the concluding chapter. Whether the nature of
implications included in our book fails to be applied to multilingual
situations as found outside the European context, for instance in the US,
we do not want to judge here. We just hope that this volume is useful for
all professionals involved in the study of bilingualism and
multilingualism.