This is a concise book on sociolinguistics. It does not dwell excessively on methodology or theoretical perspectives but offers through many examples, some presented via tables and figures, a taste of the kinds of issues sociolinguists struggle with, as well as some of their major findings. As a specialist in the Papua New Ginean languages, Romaine naturally makes good use of non-Western examples like Tok Pisin to illustrate such problems as language/dialect, language contact, language hierarchy, though she also draws examples from the Scandanavian languages as well as research on the social dialects of English. The book is highly readable even to a non-linguist like me. It probably does not cover all the conceivable major topics, but what it covers it covers well. The annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter is a useful guide to further reading.

My only complaint regards her non-critical citation of the much-repeated "fact" (to illustrate the language/dialect problem) that speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese languages share a common writing system. This of course is true only for the classical literary (written) language, not the vernacular varieties.

This is the book you should read first if you have even a slight interest in Sociolinguistics, the branch of linguistics dealing with how society uses language. My particular area of interest is code-switching (when a person switches from one language to another within an exchange, i.e. "Have agua, please?") and I read Dr. Romaine's book to prepare me for a volume particulary about code-switching. Thanks to Dr. Romaine for a great read.

If you're a citizen of the united states, the term "gender" is certainly not new to you, nor the discussions about it. For me, an austrian student of linguistics and media sciences, Suzanne Romaines book offers an very interesting, easy to read AND easy to understand survey over different topics dealing with the idea of "doing gender". Sounds like an introduction into gender, but that's not true: Her arguments are quite independent and don't disregard other points of view. She encourages the reader to make up his own mind and to think about the talked over chapters for yourself. In this sense an open minded, stimulating book. Be aware of the society you're living in, woman! Maybe you can change the rules for your advantage...

I think this book is very repetitive and is a very poor attempt at showing why losing all of these languages is important. They are comparing losing these languages to animals and plants going extinct. They try and draw all of these worthless comparissions that do not make any sense. This book is not even worth being picked up.

Vanishing Voices does a good job of showing how larger languages are destroying smaller ones, and the methods of language death. This is all pretty much common knowledge. However, the authors fail in their attempt to give a reason as to WHY language death is something with which we should be concerned. The only argument they put forth is in a ecological/enviromental analogy, which says that biological diversity is good and stable, therefore, linguistic diversity must. However, they only go part way in their analogy and reject natural selection for languages. They also show that linguistic diversity corresponds to environmental diversity, but state this has nothing to do with the inexcessiblity of the areas. The violin-playing and loaded words are hard to stomach if you are looking for good social science. I would not suggest the book unless you are an ecological activist wanting to try to link your cause with "saving cultures" or with yet another critique of the West.

There is little for me to add to the other fine reader reviews of this work except to say that I found it very repetitive. I am not sure that it could not have been a long article in the Atlantic or Harper's.
I am not at all sure that there is much that can be done to preserve some of these minor languages in the long run but I do find it admirable that the authors have taken up the cudgel.