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Roddy Cowie and Ellen Douglas-Cowie. Postlingually Acquired Deafness: Speech Deterioration and the Wider Consequences. Trends in Linguistics Studies Monographs. 62. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1992. Pp. x + 304. DM 138,-(hardcover).

Cowie and Douglas-Cowie have produced a significant addition to the literature on the hearing-impaired with their very readable text. What the book may lack at points in the depth of its consideration of certain topics is certainly compensated for by the breadth of its coverage. Certainly this is the most global treatment of the speech of the hearing-impaired to date. This work represents the first attempt to also place the speech of the hearing-impaired within a sociolinguistic framework. In general the book benefits from the apparently better cross-fertilization between linguistics and audiology/speech-language pathology that seems to occur in Great Britain. The book begins with an overview chapter on acquired hearing impairment followed by a chapter reviewing the speech literature. The following chapters describe the authors' study conducted in Belfast, Ireland. There are chapters on intelligibility, acoustic analyses, intonation, errors of articulation, and social and emotional reactions to the speech of the hearing impaired. Two chapters then cover lipreading, and the book concludes with a chapter on the quality of life of those affected with hearing loss. While each chapter does present new data, not all studies are as well-designed or as well-controlled as perhaps one might like to see. This book is distinguished from most past treatments in that social and emotional factors of hearing loss are also considered. The book encourages a more comprehensive understanding of the handicap resulting from compromised hearing. This is a welcomed change of perspective and one which will be appreciated by its readers. One potential weakness of the book pertains to its consideration of research in the North American context. While comprehensive in its coverage of the research conducted in the United Kingdom, there are some surprising omissions of relevant research conducted in the United States and Canada. One such surprising omission is the lack of reference to Osberger and McGarr's (1982) excellent overview on the speech of the hearing-impaired. While it is often not possible to cover research efforts around the world due to linguistic barriers, presumably this excuse does not obtain in the case of America and the United Kingdom. This is not to imply that this oversight does not occur in the reverse direction — American researchers are even somewhat notorious in their propensity to ignore research conducted in the British Isles.