Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events: A Microethnographic Perspective provides a rich discussion of classroom discourse informed by careful and thoughtful analysis thatdraws together scholarly advances in sociocultural analysis, sociolinguistics, positionality, identity, power and meaning making. It offers to the field a book which can serve multiple purposes: an introduction to classroom analysis, a discussion of different lenses for exploring the dynamics of classrooms, an exploration of the key theorists in the aforementioned areas, and examples of classroom discourse with analyses that researchers and practitioners can use as the basis for pursuing their own analyses. At the same time, it represents a somewhat rare contribution....collaboration among school-based educators with university scholars. This volume is a timely and significant addition to the field.

Throughout her book, Cindy Johanek portrays a near-crisis situation in the field of rhetoric and composition: she laments the "prominent place" of anecdotal evidence that belies "our rejection of the quantitative," and warns us that the "near-abandonment of research that seeks and analyzes numerical data" will divide us "further into the more private worlds of personal stories" (11). She argues for an inclusive paradigm in composition and rhetoric studies, one that focuses on the type of research the field needs versus the kind we like. And she assumes that what we like is bad for the field. Many readers will find the arguments over paradigms, current-traditional rhetoric, and quantitative/qualitative debates familiar, but Johanek takes a uniquely strident approach in championing the neglected realms of empirical research.