This book consists of seven chapters; its
main aim is “to apply certain theoretical insights into
linguistic variation and change to the Spanish speaking
world” (p. ix). The first three chapters are devoted to
explaining fundamental concepts related to variation and change;
the following three, to presenting the broad patterns displayed
by geographical and social variation in Spanish; and the last,
to the history of the standardization process of Spanish. From
the beginning, Penny makes clear that he is not claiming to
advance variationist theory, but he hopes that the data presented
in the book will test and support such theoretical approach
to language, which I understand he refers to in the sense of
the quantitative paradigm. Similar disclaimers are made throughout
the book regarding the unequal attention paid to the correlation
between linguistic and sociological features of Spanish-speaking
communities, given the paucity of data available.