Reviews 277 vernacular languages, for example by teaching malhun—centuries-old popular poetry sung and written in the vernacular language found in the Maghreb—in the schools, since it represents remembrance and cultural traditions. Examining language in media such as cinema, theater, and songs, Chachou points to the absence of Algerian Arabic and Berber in newspapers even though those languages are present on national television. She notes the strong position of standard Arabic on the public radio while local radio stations increasingly broadcast Algerian Arabic or l’arabe médian, a variety situated between the standard and the vernacular. Algerian Arabic and Berber dominate in music, although Rai folk music uses borrowings from French and Algerian Arabic and code-switches between the two. The second half of the book deals with language in newspaper advertising, covering theory (for example, Bourdieu’s notion that language and values reflect power relationships, ideologies, and norms), linguistic strategies used by advertisers (“Algerianisms,” monolingual and bilingual signs, and the predominance of standard Arabic during Ramadan and other Muslim holidays), and English and Italian borrowings. Examples are followed by brief data analysis. Overall, this book contains a great deal of useful information, but its goals, which cover a wide range of contexts, may be overly ambitious and at times not particularly original. The chapters on advertising are the book’s strength, as they offer a rich set of data. The data, however, could benefit from deeper analysis. Nonetheless, this volume provides a valuable contribution to the field of Maghrebi sociolinguistics due to its empirical approach. Manhattan College Samira Hassa Faucher, Marie. L’enfance des mots: l’étymologie vagabonde. Paris: Silène, 2013. ISBN 978-2-913947-13-9. Pp. 159. 18 a. This book of “etymology” is neither a learned study nor a dictionary, but rather what Faucher calls a search for “le berceau des mots,” original meanings, as a route to understanding unexpected connections in the French lexicon. In an attitude of wideeyed, playful enjoyment, she has gathered evidence of lexical families, some of them surprisingly widespread. The preface by poet Henri Gougaud sets the stage, reminding us that all words have stories to tell, as he praises the author’s vagabondage in the forest of words. The book includes twenty chapters, ending with a summary of chapter contents (139–48), a word index (149–55), and a bibliography (157) of three titles: the Robert étymologique (RE), the Robert historique (RH), and, curiously, a student’s etymological dictionary dating from 1909. Unfortunately, Faucher has taken as her reporting scheme and model the“présentation synthétique”of RE (devised by Picoche as an antidote to strictly alphabetical presentation such as found in RH). Inspired by the RE, which shows coussin ( having been consulted, only two of the fifteen pairs such as coussin/cuisse listed under“Did you know that...?”prove to demonstrate the kind of etymological connection this reviewer understands by the term“vient de.” Forêt does come from Latin FORESTIS (SILVA); and divan is correctly identified— although one cannot accept that “divan vient de douane,” since, at best, each is an extension of the original Turkish meaning of ‘conseil politique, salle de conseil.’In the body of the text, Faucher’s efforts are generally more successful, her phrasing more careful, for example, “outil vient d’USITILIUM, qui vient d’UTI, USUS” (67). The etymologist is happy to see an accusative case as etymon and happier yet to see that the noun in –IUM is shown as deriving from the verb. Faucher’s presentation of the twenty or so words in the family of VEN RE (44–45) is clean and clear, as are many others of the 250 words presented.Yet her reported understanding of the etymological relationships between chosen pairs of words remains open to question, and her basic premise (“sens premier”=“sens propre”[12]) appears indefensible, since—as Faucher herself admits—the etymological origins of words may be far from their current meaning. In following her search to“laver les mots pour leur rendre leur netteté,”she has nonetheless succeeded in finding a gracious way to link members of many lexical families and, in so doing, to illuminate their interrelationships. Caveat...