198 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) cussion of specific examples reveals some characteristic aspects of agrammatic output. Ch. 4, 'The grammar of connected agrammatic speech', completes the summary of grammatical characteristics of nonfluent aphasia. It argues against the label 'telegraphic speech' and against the theory of 'economy of articulatory effort' in explaining agrammatic behavior. Ch. 5, 'Speech, writing, and oral reading', discusses differences and similarities of impairment among these different output modes. Examples of spontaneous writing illustrate the possibility of dramatic dissociation between written and spoken language. Examples from oral reading show that a patient may tend to make the same types of errors in reading as in speech. Ch. 6, 'Bilingual and polyglot aphasia', by Loraeme K. Obler, José Centeno, and Nancy Eng, discusses the similarities and differences between languages in aphasies who are multilingual. They point out that deficits and recovery are usually parallel but that variance can occur (resulting, for example, from structural differences between languages). The authors then discuss special behaviors and brain organization of the bilingual aphasie. They end the chapter with advice to speech-language pathologists on diagnosis of patients who speak a language or dialect unfamiliar to the clinician. Ch. 7, 'Inventing therapy for aphasia', by Audrey L. Holland and Claire Penn, is a fascinating discussion of how to devise therapy when the patient and therapist do not share the patient's primary language. They address such issues as how to choose which language to work with and the importance of cross-cultural influences on therapy design. In sum, this book is primarily designed to inform clinicians in their efforts to provide therapy. However, the liberal exemplification of agrammatic output should be of interest to even nonclinical researchers. [Sherri K. Shaw, University of Texas, Austin. ] Xenismen: Die Nachahmung fremder Sprachen. By Wolfgang Moser (Europ äische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 21, 159.) Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang, 1996. Pp. 284. Xenisms are phenomena that characterize somebody or something as foreign. They can be nonlinguistic (a kimono, national anthems, schnitzel) or linguistic (Chinese characters, a foreign accent, loan words). Most importantly, xenisms must be considered as typical of a foreign people or language, even if this doesn't coincide with reality: most Germans don't wear leather breeches, and Chinese people do have an ItI phoneme distinct from IV. In his PhD thesis (University of Graz, Austria), Moser gives a detailed linguistic and semiotic analysis ofxenisms that imitate foreign languages, limiting the scope of his study to intentionally used interlingual xenisms in written texts. He then discusses the role of foreignness and points out that on a scale 'total ignorance—intimate knowledge', foreignness is more or less near to ignorance but not identical to it. You have to know at least something (even something wrong) about other people to see them as foreign and different from yourself. You must know that Fritz is a German name to evoke 'germanness', but you need not know more (e.g. that hardly anybody in Germany would call their son Fritz nowadays, but rather Michael or Kevin). This explains why linguistic xenisms do not appear at random but are associated with the languages and cultures in contact with one's own. The introductory chapter (1 3-29) is completed by a series ofprivative dichotomies: Xenisms can be cotextual or implanted, reduced or fully decodable, interlingual or intralingual, spontaneous or conventional, foreign or pseudo-foreign, foreign elements (mostly words) or foreign usages (e.g. word order rules). Finally, the relation of xenisms to a certain language can be more or less vague or precise. Apart from the introductory chapter, the book is divided into two main parts: The first part (31-129) analyzes the linguistic structure of xenisms; the second part (131-254) deals with xenisms as semiotic phenomena. In the structural analysis, M explains xenisms as deviations from linguistic norms (following Eugenio Coseriu's definition of norm). Their forms range from the imitation of hieroglyphs to 'typical' name endings and are broadly illustrated with examples from Asterix and its translations. The second part of this chapter analyzes the various languages that are used to characterize different people in Jaroslav Hasek's The good soldier Svejk and how the xenistic effects...