most especially when used by linguists (e.g., “‘Expert Rhetorics’ in Advocacy for Endangered Languages: Who Is Listening, and What Do They Hear?”, Jane Hill, Journal of Linguistic Anthro- pology 12, 2002:119–133). As Cameron points out in her chapter, these essentialisms are 19th century romantic nationalist in origin, and generally either biological or cultural, involving metaphors such as “a language is a living organism or species,” or variations on the nationalist Herderian formula of “one language = one culture = one people.” The chapters also collectively illustrate the roles of linguists and other language profession- als in generating discourses of endangerment, whether they are affiliated with state governments, regional governments or language movements, or nationally- or internationally- sponsored research projects. Thus as Maître and Matthey emphasize, a reflexive approach is as vexatious as it is necessary in the study of these discourses. As mentioned, most of the chapters analyze published media discourses rather than ethno- graphic data. But the impact of such discourse on minority language speakers is difficult to gauge here, except in the cases of Boudreau and Dubois, Maître and Matthey, and Jaffe, all based on field research. In the absence of ethnographic data, Cameron, Moïse, and Schmidt give social psychological analyses of media and institutional discourses of endangerment. The seeming irrationality or disproportionate reaction in some of the discourses does indeed require an explanation tied not only to facts and figures but also to affect and sociality. However, from an anthropological perspective such an explanation is ideally supported by the analysis of both spoken and written discourse data wherever possible. The unity of these chapters in the matter of the timing and motivations of discourses of endangerment is convincing. Since the 1990s nation-states have been caught between the hegemonic nationalist requirements of political unity and the requirements of the new glo- balized political economy. In addition to defensive and universalist discourses of language endangerment, however, contemptuous “discourses of death” are also still being produced in nation-state contexts like Turkey (about Kurdish) and Scotland (about Gaelic). Public dis- courses calling for governmental neglect and outright discrimination express a horror of the diversity represented by the linguistic minorities within their borders, rather than a genteel horror of homogenization or even a defense of the state language (e.g., “‘Gaelic Doomed as Speakers Die Out’?: The Public Discourse of Gaelic Language Death in Scotland,” Emily McEwan-Fujita, in Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse, Wilson McLeod, ed., DunedinAcademic Press, 2006: 279–293). To understand the full picture of how neoliberalism impacts language diversity and endangerment, the volume could also be aug- mented by future studies of the presence or absence of such discourses in non-Western contexts, for example in Africa as discussed by Friederike Lüpke of SOAS in a 2009 Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project Workshop presentation. In conclusion, this volume’s insights about Western discourses of language endangerment produced in the shadow of globalization help to flesh out more fully the reflexive, reflective, and ethnographic study of discourses of language death and endangerment, an area of inquiry that has been gaining scholarly attention and momentum since about 2000. These insights should be a part of any course on the topic of endangered languages, and specialists examining the current situation of minority languages would find it helpful to set their own cases in the context of the larger picture provided by this volume. Saint Mary’s University 923 Robie Street Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 3C3, Canada emilymcfujita@gmail.com Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country. Paul V. Kroskrity and Margaret C. Field, eds. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009. viii + 353 pp. ERIN DEBENPORT University of New Mexico This collection of works, drawing on ethnographic research among North and Meso-American indigenous communities, is an important contribution to the fields of anthropology, linguistics 150 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology