Review of Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries

transcript

Journal of Sociolinguistics 14/2, 2010: 262–284

BOOK REVIEWS

ANETA PAVLENKO (ed.). Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries. Clevedon, U.K.:Multilingual Matters. 2008. 256 pp. Hb (1847690874) $99.95.

Reviewed by PETER DE COSTA

To distinguish between a language and a dialect the Yiddish linguist, MaxWeinreich, in a much cited quotation, observed that a ‘language is a dialectwith an army and navy’. In making this pronouncement, he underscored howthe political status of the speakers of a variety influences its perceived status aslanguage or dialect. After all, language is a contested entity, and its status is oftenbolstered when governments establish a standard variety of their language (orlanguages) to be taught in schools, used in official documents, and promoted foruse in the media. This notion becomes apparent as we move through the chaptersof Aneta Pavlenko’s edited collection Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries asits contributors illustrate how various countries negotiate a new linguistic realityfollowing the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

In her introductory chapter, Pavlenko provides an overview of the languagepolicies and practices in the Russian Empire and the U.S.S.R. Following that, shetraces the language shift in Eastern Europe (Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Moldova and Ukraine), the Transcaucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia),and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan andUzbekistan). Adopting a critical perspective, she points out that the post-Sovietcontext offers several theoretical challenges to contemporary sociolinguistictheory as it requires us to interrogate prevailing notions of postcolonialism,diaspora and minority language rights. For one, the term ‘postcolonial’, shecontends, needs to be unpacked to better represent the multiple facets ofSoviet language and education policies. Next, she questions the appropriacy ofcategorizing Russian speakers as members of a ‘diaspora’ as these speakers do notsee Russia as their homeland. A re-articulation of their status is also necessary,especially in light of their multiethnic makeup. Finally, Pavlenko notes that thetraditionally dichotomous view of linguistic ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ begs amore nuanced understanding, given that Russian has evolved into a regionallingua franca and a mother tongue for many people in these countries. In fact, theinvestigation of the minority rights of speakers of Russian, now a ‘postcolonial’language, becomes a theme in this collection which is set against a historicalcontext and the complex geopolitical forces that shape the post-Soviet experience.

The geopolitical web mapped out in the first chapter is explicated in Chapter 2.In this chapter, Giger and Sloboda present us with the interesting case of

C© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 20109600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

BOOK REVIEWS 263

Belarus – a country where the language of the ethnic majority (Belarusian)is being lost in favor of Russian. The regulation of language choice comes underscrutiny in this chapter as we are led to see how the absence of individuallanguage choice in all the spheres of Belarusian society is the result of acompendium of factors: a one-sided interpretation of existing legislation in favorof Russian, the closure of Belarusian-language classes in bilingual schools andthe transformation of these schools into exclusively Russian-language schools,and the execution of top-down initiatives which limit the use of Belarusian atuniversities. The aggregation of these forces, coupled with the stigmatizationof Belarusian as a ‘peasant’ language and its reduction to symbolic functions,contributes to its low status in Belarus.

While the hegemonic residue of linguistic russification is borne out inChapter 2, Bilaniuk and Melnyk paint a different picture in Chapter 3, whichfocuses on Ukraine. Following a brief history of language policy and educationin Ukraine, we learn that Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in this country isrooted in a turbulent history, resulting in Ukrainian being established as its soleofficial language in 1989. The lack of choice as depicted in the previous chaptercontrasts with its general availability in Ukraine. Particularly interesting is whatthe authors identify as the increasingly popular practice of ‘non-accommodatingbilingualism’ (p. 84) which allows speakers to use their preferred language in aconversation. Equally noteworthy is how Ukrainian pop culture is helping fuelthe increased use of Ukrainian, and how many young people take up Ukrainianas a form of grass-roots resistance to perceived historical injustices.

Citing 2004 census data of reported native language and language of everydayuse, Ciscel in Chapter 4 points to the dominant use of Russian as a lingua franca inMoldova. This pattern of use is intriguing given that the language of instructionin the schools is 79.5 percent Moldovan/Romanian, and 20.3 percent Russian.The discrepancy can be explained in part by the uneven application and irregularenforcement of the Moldovan language in school and the general perception ofRussian as a prestigious language. Consequently, as Ciesel points out, ‘it is stillcommon to find Moldovan/Romanian speakers switching to Russian as soon asa participant in an interchange uses a Russian word or phrase’ (p. 111).

Indeed, finding that delicate balance between strengthening the status of thetitular languages without imposing new linguistic regimes in the process ofbuilding new nation-states is an uphill task. This is evident in Bulajeva andHogan-Brun’s chapter (Chapter 5) on Lithuania. Their analysis of the currentsociolinguistic situation in Lithuania reveals how its inclusive language policieshave helped foster multilingualism in the country. Particularly encouraging arethe high pass rates of non-native speakers of Lithuania who have taken thestate examination for employment in the public and semi-public sector, and theautonomy granted to students in school to use their mother tongue in non-formaleducational settings.

While the reader is hopeful about the linguistic situation in Lithuania, acertain level of bleakness descends on Rannut’s chapter (Chapter 6) on Estonia.

C© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2010

264 BOOK REVIEWS

The government’s agenda to introduce Estonian as the official language and acommon language, and its plan to arrange minority languages in a hierarchyand regulate them has resulted in a linguistic fracturing of Estonian society; this isevidenced by the little contact between Russian and Estonian speakers. Equallydistressing is the impact of such a policy on sections of the Russian-speakingpopulation who have encountered a decreased competitiveness in the economicmarketplace, and the palpable reality of losing their citizenship because Russianspeakers are expected to pass a language test administered in Estonian to acquirecitizenship. These changes, as Rannut puts it, have consequently triggered an‘extensive identity crisis within the Russian-speaking population’ (p. 154).

While Chapters 2 to 6 examine the sociolinguistic situation in EasternEuropean countries, the remaining three chapters shift the readers’ focus toCentral Asia. In Chapter 7, Smagulova explains the challenges involved inrestoring the status of the Kazakh language. Hurdles include the lack of fluencyand literacy skills among government employees, and the lack of specialists inthe area of assessment. Smagulova also reports on the findings of an INTAS-funded project conducted in several Central Asian countries. Drawing on asample comprising 2,255 respondents from five ethnic groups, the surveydata reveal that Russian remains the dominant language of communicationacross all domains. This finding, however, is offset somewhat by the increaseduse of Kazakh among younger Kazakhstanis for interpersonal communication,thereby indicating that Russian as a language of the private domain is beingchallenged.

Just as Russian continues to enjoy high status in official circles in Kazakhstan,its status as a language of prestige remains relatively intact in Kyrgystan. InChapter 8, Orusbaev, Musttajoki, and Protassova point out that Kyrgystan’sofficial language, Russian, sits alongside its state language, Kyrgyz. While thelatter is endowed with national and symbolic functions, the former is more highlyvalued. This is conveyed through the authors’ observation, ‘to be well educatedmeans to be acquainted with Russian literature and to speak Russian’ (p. 218).Orusbaev et al. also report on findings from their INTAS survey which targeted16 to 17-year-old students and 55 to 65-year-old retirees. Like their Estonian andKazakh counterparts (see Chapters 6 and 7, respectively), the results demonstratethat the younger generation view multilingualism positively, compared to theolder generation who has come to accept the status quo. This represents apromising turn of events as it suggests that speaking Kyrgyz is becomingincreasingly important for Kyrgyz people.

In line with the high status accorded to Russian as seen in the precedingchapters, Nagzibekova, in the last chapter (Chapter 9), underscores its prestigelevel while also emphasizing that it is used as a language of inter-ethniccommunication. Given that knowledge of Russian among Tajik speakers isinfluenced by their level of education, occupation, and social status, we alsolearn that Tajik-Russian bilingualism is most common among the well educatedand those who work in multi-ethnic work places where Russian functions as a

BOOK REVIEWS 265

lingua franca. Equally fascinating is how investment in and subsequent returnsfrom learning Russian seem to extend beyond Tajik shores: Russian-speakingparents send their children to Russian-language schools because they want towork in Russia, while temporary migrants who leave Tajikistan to work in theRussian Federation seek to learn it as they are required to demonstrate at leastbasic proficiency in Russian.

Over the nine chapters, the reader is introduced to language developments ina part of the world which, to date, has been under-represented in the literature.Another contribution to the field is how the notion of the minority rights ofspeakers of a ‘postcolonial’ language such as Russian is complexified in thisvolume. Much has been written about the linguistic imperialism associatedwith the spread of English (cf. Phillipson 1992) and the attempts to resist suchhegemonic overtures (cf. Canagarajah 1999), but one thing that particularlystood out in this collection is how some authors (e.g. Pavlenko, Rannut) turnlinguistic russification on its head by illustrating how the Russian-speakingpopulations in these countries find themselves at the short end of the stickfollowing the break up of the U.S.S.R.

While this volume breaks new ground by acquainting the larger scholarlycommunity to the post-Soviet countries, one cannot help but notice the lack ofqualitative detail deployed in the collection. Admittedly, efforts were made topresent an overview of the sociolinguistic profile of these countries by invokingcensus data (e.g. Chapters 5 and 8), survey data (e.g. Chapters 7 and 8), anddata from other government departments (e.g. Chapter 3). Equally commendablewas the insertion of photographs (e.g. Chapters 2, 5, and 8) to illustrate howmultilingualism is manifested in public street signs. However, it would have beenappreciated if the authors had gone one step further and supplied the readers withexamples of multilingualism as enacted in conversations. In particular, it wouldhave been helpful to have seen how Russian as a lingua franca is used among thepeople of these countries. This would also have provided much needed evidenceto back claims made by some authors (e.g. Bilaniuk and Melnyk in Chapter 3,and Smagulova in Chapter 7) who argue that language choice is governedby the domain of use. Interestingly, the need for a greater use of qualitativetools is not missed by some of the contributors to the collection. For instance,Smagulova concedes, ‘ . . . the quantitative approach does not permit us to seespeakers as units of analysis and downplays the agency of the respondents. Byfocusing on the broad picture, we miss people’s local experiences . . .’ (p. 195). Asimilar sentiment is echoed by Orusbaev et al. who acknowledge the limitationsof their survey data: ‘still the survey lacks the real histories of the people’(p. 221).

In spite of these drawbacks, I found this collection an informative read.Through their examination of the ethnic and linguistic makeup of the differentcountries, the linguistic and ideological factors that shape attitudes towardsparticular languages, and the regional and global forces such as migration andeducation, the authors bring us up close and personal with how the linguistic

266 BOOK REVIEWS

landscape has changed in the post-Soviet countries over the last two decades.Such an understanding is as vital as it is timely as we negotiate a world thatis increasingly defined by multilingualism and characterized by flows (cf. Heller2008).

REFERENCES

Canagarajah, Suresh A. 1999. Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching.Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Heller, Monica. 2008. Language and the nation-state: Challenges to sociolinguistictheory and practice. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12: 504–524.

Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

PETER DE COSTA

University of Wisconsin-Madison600 N. Park Street, Madison WI 53706

U.S.A.decosta@wisc.edu

H. SAMY ALIM, AWAD IBRAHIM AND ALASTAIR PENNYCOOK (eds.). Global LinguisticFlows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language. New York:Routledge. 2009. 260 pp. Pb (9780805862850) $41.95.

Reviewed by ELAINE RICHARDSON

Global Linguistic Flows focuses on the study of language in international HipHop Culture(s), paying close attention to ‘creative linguistic choices, styles, andvarieties . . . ’ (p. 9). Many of the collection’s scholars situate their work withinsociolinguistic theories of styling, crossing, language ideology, and conceptsof linguistic anthropology such as identification as an ongoing process. Theyalso spin their own theories: conversational sampling; split styles; dusty footphilosophy; to name a few. This work is at the cutting-edge of innovativescholarship in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and applied linguistics.These scholars are attempting the very challenging task of analyzing what isarguably the most important verbal art and musical sociocultural movement ofour times – Hip Hop, which is defined by practitioners as a worldview, a lifestylethat consists of cultural practices of MCing, DJing, graffiti art, breakdancing and‘cultural domains such as fashion, language, style, knowledge, and politics . . .’(p. 2). As lead editor H. Samy Alim exclaims in the introduction, Hip Hop is aprime site for the study of globalization, localization, ‘transnationalism, culturalflow, syncretism, indigenization, hybridity, (im)migration, . . . diaspora’ amongothers (p. 4). The collections’ scholars investigate: ‘Just how is it that Hip HopCulture has become a primary site of identification and self-understanding foryouth around the world?’ and ‘What linguistic resources do youth manipulate,(re)appropriate, and sometimes (re)create, in order to fashion themselves asmembers of a [Global Hip Hop Nation]?’ (p. 5). The volumes’ scholars are

BOOK REVIEWS 267

committed ‘to the potential of social transformation through intellectual inquiry’(p. 5). Alim’s introduction goes a long way to enliven and inform Hip Hop studieswith his critiques of some of its lines of scholarship, such as:

• those that describe Black American Hip Hop as monolithic and negative; or• those that project the researcher’s own political and social ideologies onto

data; and• some scholarship which does not ethnographically engage in ‘Hip

Hopography’, studying Hip Hop in direct collaboration with representativecultural agents.

As this text is interested in developing the ‘sociolinguistics of globalization’,it privileges categories of analysis such as locality, cultural hybridization,difference, and discontinuity. In their attempts to understand the linguisticand cultural innovations that are taking place globally, there is a tendencyto de-emphasize the globalized African American and Afrodiasporic discursivefoundations of Hip Hop. This is a tension that surfaces throughout several ofthe chapters. A goal of this brief review is to insist on the African American andAfrodiasporic foundations of Hip Hop as a tool to understanding the complexityof other Hip Hops. The book is divided into twelve tracks (chapters) which areorganized around two themes. Disk 1 (section 1) contains six essays, the focusof which is ‘Styling locally, styling globally: The globalization of language andculture in a global Hip Hop nation’. The theme for the six essays which compriseDisk 2 (section 2) is ‘The power of the word: Hip Hop poetics, pedagogies, andthe politics of language in global contexts’.

Alastair Pennycook and Tony Mitchell have the lead chapter, in the ‘Stylinglocally, styling globally’ section, which sets the tone for many of the book’sessays. The authors’ interest in locality is illuminated by subjects of their studysuch as Somali-Canadian MC K’Naan, whose 2006 Juno Award winning CDDusty Foot Philosopher critiques the hegemonic outlook of the first world cameraand its Western gaze, which disseminates images of Africans as shoeless dusty-foot paupers to the rest of the wired world. K’Naan explains that though peoplemay be poor they have dignity and philosophize about the world the same aswell-read and well-traveled people do. Pennycook and Mitchell expand this imageinto their theory of Hip Hop as a means for localization and groundedness. Theyexplore how Hip Hoppers such as those in Australia are at once participating in‘global Hip Hop’ (the quotation marks reflect my uneasiness with the term), ‘localphilosophies of global significance’, and ‘the already local’ or the ‘coevalness oforigins’. Pennycook and Mitchell argue that conceptualizing African AmericanHip Hop as dominant, especially in non-English-language media,

fails to engage with the different circuits of flow through which Hip Hop circulatesglobally . . . , the diversity of local appropriations of Hip Hop, or the coevalness oforigins and the roles of mimicry and enactment (what may appear very similar maynot in fact be so). (p. 28)

268 BOOK REVIEWS

Pennycook and Mitchell go on to state that they are not out to deny theinfluence that African American Hip Hop has had on ‘global Hip Hop’. Theycontend that a focus on similarities should not obscure differences and shouldnot assume directionality. They compare their view with the treatment ofCreole languages. They argue that seeing AAVE as a subvariety of English, forexample, assumes nondivergence rather than a ‘Creole-based language carryingnumerous elements of African languages’ (p. 29) reconverging with English, andthat apparent similarity should not assume unidirectional spread.

To carry this argument further and in a direction that Pennycook andMitchell might resist, Hip Hop is derived from Afrodiasporic culture, emanatingfrom West and Central Africans and their resettlement in and among othersocieties brought about by slavery, colonization, neo-imperialism, migration,diasporic crossings, wars and global technological processes. Broadly speaking,the African Diaspora allows us to group a range of African, Neo-African andAfro-American practices for comparative and multi-dimensional analyses ofspecific sociocultural, sociolinguistic, historical and political features in Africa,the Americas, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia and Asia. A majorapproach to the study of African Diasporic practice has focused on continuitiesamong Black communities, the global flows of Black ways of knowing, doingand being. The dispersion of Black popular musical idioms as repositories ofknowledge and experience are an example of that process and a primary vehiclefor transmission of ideas – flowing in many directions throughout the Diaspora.As such, Afrodiasporic studies focus on Afrodiasporic complexities. The culturalcrossings of Black Jamaicans and Black Americans is an example mentionedby the authors. What both approaches (continuities and complexities) have incommon from a Black linguistics perspective (Makoni, Smitherman, Ball andSpears 2003) is their interest in moving speakers of Black languages towardcollective liberation. Pennycook and Mitchell’s interest in diasporicity of Hip Hopseems to stop at the ‘dynamics of change, struggle and appropriation’ (p. 27). Arelated question that lingered in my mind as I read this chapter is how does theco-present origins argument work for White ‘global Hip Hoppers’? It seems to methat it has the potential to erase the Afrodiasporic contribution. This is a pointthat one of the chapter’s authors, Pennycook, does not promote, (as indicated infootnote 3) but that follows from the line of argument.

Jannis Androutsopoulos’ chapter approaches Hip Hop from a threediscourse sphere perspective (artistic expression, media discourse, fans andactivists/tertiary texts). He argues that ‘English (including stylized AfricanAmerican English) is a main resource for constructing “glocal” Hip Hopidentities, which gain their meaning as local performances of a global culturalparadigm . . .’ (pp. 44–45). Androutsopolous applies Fiske’s concept of verticalintertextuality to Hip Hop discourse. He looks at German and Greek rap lyrics,how they are ‘adapted to local contexts by retaining “global” features’ (p. 44);mass media conventions in Hip Hop; and how fans and activists use theseresources in their computer-mediated discourse. In his analysis of primary

BOOK REVIEWS 269

sphere/artistic expression, he examines the cultural referencing patterns comingout of Afrodiasporic African American traditions of the dozens and rap. Heidentifies them as genre-typical as they are employed in German and Greek,for example, emphasizing their local referents. He argues that ‘referencingin fact indexes a hybrid cultural horizon, in which global media culture,European cultural heritage, and specifically local traditions merge’ (p. 49).His point is that the cultural references are locally anchored and opaque toNorth American audiences. From a Black linguistics perspective, I see that thesediverse communities have appropriated Afrodiasporic ways of knowing, beingand doing and encourage Hip Hoppers from any racial or ethnic group to use theiravailable cultural tools as a means of expression. Androutsopolous observes that‘As rap enters new speech communities, the original predominance of AfricanAmerican English is replaced by new, and often more complex, sociolinguisticconditions’ (p. 50). This is particularly interesting because a pervasive underlyinglanguage ideology of Hip Hop is tricksterism (Richardson 2006). Hip Hop is atrickster discourse which transforms language in and out of different intertextualchains – registers, dialects, languages and styles to the users’ purposes of self-actualization. As Smitherman ([1977]1986: 103) explains, ‘while the rituals ofblack discourse have an overall formulaic structure, individuals are challengedto do what they can within the traditional mold’. Further, improvisation ischaracteristic of Black music and culture (Dance 2002: 74–75). Thus, the surfaceabsence of ‘African American English’ in Hip Hop discourse or Hip Hop NationLanguage (HHNL) (Alim 2006) does not negate its pervasive influence on theideological force of linguistic expression.

Jennifer Roth-Gordon’s piece, ‘Conversational sampling, race trafficking,and the invocation of the Gueto in Brazilian Hip Hop’, reveals similarconundrums that arise in the study of ‘global Hip Hop’. Roth-Gordon relieson Androutsopolous’ third sphere of Hip Hop discourse (the fan-activist context)and Osumare’s theory of connective marginalities to analyze how Brazilian HipHop youth ‘actively create connections between Brazil and the U.S.’ (p. 64).She looks specifically at how ‘global Hip Hop relies on – and helps construct –the racialized urban ghetto as a site of power and prestige’ (p. 64). Roth-Gordon’s conversational sampling includes ‘how rappers and rap fans activelyconstruct transnational connections by reworking well-known and familiarreferences’ (p. 66). She focuses on rap lyrics and their recontextualization in theconversations of poor Black male fans. She asserts that ‘conversational samplingbecomes part of a glocal communicative competence, where transnationallinguistic practices inform local identity construction and style’ (p. 69). Racetrafficking is important to her argument, which she defines as ‘examples ofshared marginality [that] must be shaped and even invented. This is mostobvious in politically conscious Hip Hop’s embrace of U.S. ideas of institutionalracism and a Black-White racial dichotomy’ (p. 70). Roth-Gordon arguesthat Brazil’s practices of ‘racial cordiality’, required assimilation of ‘racialminorities’, ‘national discourses promoting racial democracy, miscegenation,

270 BOOK REVIEWS

whitening . . . [and] lack of “race talk” . . . all suggest that race does not explainthe shocking levels of disparity [in Brazil]’ (p.71), and thus direct discussion ofBrazilian racism by Brazilian rappers is a forged connection with U.S. Blacks.Though Brazil styles itself as a racial democracy, its institutional racism cannotbe denied. Petronilha Beatriz Goncalves e Silva’s (2004) discussion of citizenshipand education makes this point through connecting salary differentials betweenwhite and black Brazilians to educational inequality. The author writes:

This situation – which both generates and is generated by specific modes ofthought and behavior, discriminatory on the part of some, submissive, resentful,or accommodated on the part of others – is rooted in the understanding thatsome Brazilians, the descendants of Europeans, are the bearers of a more properly‘civilized’ culture and of more ‘enlightened’ human values. Thus, all other Braziliansshould, if not become the same as the others, at least imitate them to the best of theirabilities in order to become properly ‘civilized’ as well. (p. 187)

Roth-Gordon’s emphasis is on how Brazilian youth’s employment of strategicessentialism erases Brazils’ history. She writes:

. . . Brazilian youth do not draw on pre-existing connections between the U.S.racialized ghetto and the Brazilian periphery, as much as they invent and createthese connections through acts of strategic essentialism that highlight as muchas they erase. This ‘recognition’ must be produced, and it is worth askingwhat youth have to gain through their direct and indirect affiliation with U.S.Hip Hop. (p. 74)

What is more important to me is that Brazilian rappers are using Hip Hopdiscourse to critique hegemonic Brazilian discourses that strive to shape theirreality. Black Brazilians know the history and they are exploiting ideas thatthey glean from African Americans to see race mixture as an obstacle to racialconsciousness and racial equality. In other words, ‘if we are all ok, why do we needwhitening?’ From a Black linguistics perspective, how does Roth-Gordon’s verysophisticated and interesting analysis itself work toward social transformation?

As space does not permit discussion of more of the book’s essays, I will discussH. Samy Alim’s chapter from Disc 2, ‘The power of the word’. Alim’s chapteris titled ‘Creating “an empire within an empire”: Critical Hip Hop languagepedagogies and the role of sociolinguistics’. I devote the remainder of the reviewto this chapter because it answers a very important question that I get frommy teachers in applied linguistics for teachers of language arts course: ‘How willlinguistics help me become a better language arts teacher?’ If we define ‘better’ interms of changing the system which fails far too many students of color, Alim’sessay seeks to move the profession toward social transformation. Alim showsthat use of Hip Hop language engages students and their teachers in the studyof language variation as viable curriculum. He is interested in reversing thelaws of the dominant linguistic market, which is based on a sociolinguistic orderthat pits standard language forms against non-standard ones. Alim argues that

BOOK REVIEWS 271

‘linguists and educators are obligated to present the current social and linguisticreality to students who are economically, politically, and culturally subjugatedin mainstream institutions’ (p. 214). Alim presents four pedagogical initiativesand provides sample exercises – a developmental approach. The examples are:

• ‘Real Talk’;• ‘Language in My Life’;• ‘Hip Hopography/Ethnography of Culture and Communication’; and• ‘Linguistic Profiling in the Classroom’.

Real Talk builds on Hip Hop expression and traditions of ‘straight talk’ inBlack Culture. This theme uses real talk to socialize students into awareness ofsociolinguistic variation and is similar to Wolfram’s dialect awareness program.Students listen to tape recordings and transcribe what they hear. They notice thatvariation is inherent and also systematic. The Language in my Life theme teachesstudents how to conduct ethnographies of their own speech and they are taughtbasic sociolinguistic concepts such as speech situation, speech event, and speechact. This approach validates students’ own language as a subject of worth andis central to students’ (metalinguistic) education. The Hip Hopography themeinstructs students in the study of peer-group culture. Alim provides students withrelevant transcripts and invites their analysis of language change. He showsstudents ways to document language through methods used in Smitherman’sBlack Talk. They use surveys, song lyrics, various media, interviews etc. thatactually engage students into becoming archivists of Black culture, and thoughthey learn academic methods and language, the exercises are far from merelyacademic. A major emphasis in all of this work is making students and teachersaware of power relations, and how linguistic discrimination works among thelinguistically privileged and marginalized groups of society. Alim uses variouspopular media to engage students in the topics and analytical procedures. Amajor thrust of Alim’s work centers on ideological combat. He demonstrates howCritical Hip Hop Language Pedagogies ‘operationalize the vast body of researchon language for the purposes of raising the linguistic and social consciousness ofall students [and their teachers]’ (p. 227). Alim’s work suggests that we need torevamp language education globally, as youth the world over are experiencingthe same kind of reinvention of language in their local contexts. Teachers andschools all over the world are struggling to deal with ‘marginalized languages’and speakers who have adopted/adapted Hip Hop cultural ways of knowing,doing, being, and understanding the role of language in the world.

This book is a must read for sociolinguists, educators and those interested inlanguage, culture, and globalization.

REFERENCES

Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. New York:Routledge.

272 BOOK REVIEWS

Dance, Daryl Cumber. 2002. From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore.New York: W. W. Norton.

Goncalves e Silva, Petronilha Beatriz. 2004. Citizenship and education in Brazil:The contribution of Indian peoples and Blacks in the struggle for citizenship andrecognition. In James A. Banks (ed.) Diversity and Citizenship Education: GlobalPerspectives. Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley. 185–214.

Makoni, Sinfree, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha Ball and Arthur Spears. 2003. BlackLinguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. New York:Routledge.

Richardson, Elaine. 2006. Hiphop Literacies. New York: Routledge.Smitherman, Geneva. [1977]1986. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black

America. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin; reissued, with revisions, Detroit,Michigan: Wayne State University Press.

ELAINE RICHARDSON

The Ohio State UniversityColumbus, Ohio

U.S.A.richardson.486@osu.edu

ROBERT J. BLACKWOOD. The State, the Activists and the Islanders: Language Policyon Corsica (Language Policy, 8). Berlin, Germany: Springer. 2008. 161 pp. Hb(9781402083846) €85.55.

Reviewed by DAVID DETERDING

This book offers an historical account of how the Corsican language emergedfrom its status as the ‘L’ language in a diglossic relationship with TuscanItalian to its subsequent position under severe threat from the encroachment ofFrench in all linguistic domains, though it concludes that the danger of Corsicandisappearing entirely may recently have receded somewhat as a result of officialefforts to support the language by teaching it as a school subject.

There are eight chapters in the book. The first six trace the historicaldevelopment of Corsican from its origins as a colloquial cousin of Tuscan Italian,through the increasing domination of French after the incorporation of Corsica asa French dominion in 1768, and finally to the limited but welcome recent effortsby the government to promote some education in Corsican. In describing thesedevelopments, the book shows that the islanders themselves were often willingaccomplices in abandoning their heritage language, because of the enhancededucation and work prospects offered by a good knowledge of French. Chapterseven then presents the results of a series of surveys and interviews conductedamong the islanders in 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2005, to find out about theirability in, and attitudes towards, Corsican. Finally, chapter eight ties togetherthe main threads of the book, looking at the roles played by the government,language activists, and the islanders themselves in dealing with the language.

Although the historical account is presented carefully and with greatauthority, the islanders do not really come alive in this book until chapter seven,

BOOK REVIEWS 273

when we see the results of the surveys and also read substantial extracts from theinterviews. And in fact, throughout the book there are a few additional thingsthat might have been included to embellish the material and thereby enhance ourunderstanding of the situation, and their absence is sometimes a bit puzzling. Forexample, it is a pity that there are no maps, to allow us to grasp where towns suchas Ajaccio, Bastia and Corte are, and also to offer a clearer picture of the locationof Corsica with respect to Italy and to the south of France. Furthermore, theaccount of shifts in government policy, and especially of recent efforts to supportthe Corsican language, focuses largely on education, and we learn little aboutother things, such as the extent of television and radio broadcasts in Corsican.Mention is made (p. 133) of a Corsican language journal, but no further detailsare given about its readership, how many other journals or newspapers there are,or what kinds of books might exist; and there is a brief mention of Corsican music,particularly popular song (p. 134), but almost no further details are provided.Finally, we are never offered any examples of the Corsican language, whichseems a pity as that would enrich our understanding of the data somewhat, toallow us to appreciate more clearly how the language is genetically related toItalian rather than to French, and to enable us to comprehend in what waysthe changing phonology of Corsican is being influenced by contact with French(p. 135). However, it is maybe churlish to list a few things like this that areabsent when so much of the material is presented so well, allowing us to gaina good understanding of the historical developments as well as the evolutionof official government policy. Indeed, the account is always clear, authoritativeand informative.

In chapter seven, the tone of the book changes quite substantially when weare presented with the detailed results of the surveys and also extracts frominterviews with a range of the islanders. The survey material complementsthe earlier historical account nicely, and the results that are given offer afascinating quantitative snapshot of the current status of the language andattitudes towards it on the island. However, the presentation and interpretationof the statistics are occasionally a bit puzzling. For example, Table 7.1 (p. 107)shows the proportion of the respondents who claimed to understand Corsicanin the five separate surveys, and then the figures for ‘yes’ and for ‘no’ from eachsurvey are separately broken down into men and women. For instance, in the1999 survey, 86 percent of the respondents claimed to understand Corsican,and it is reported that 53 percent of these were men and 47 percent werewomen, while of the 14 percent who claimed they did not understand Corsican,29 percent were men and 71 percent were women. Yet, despite this clear genderpreference for men to understand the language, the conclusion that is drawn isthat ‘it is fair to reason that there are no major differences between the gendersconcerning comprehension of Corsican’ (p. 108). One reason for this unexpectedconclusion is the way the results are presented: it is not particularly importantwhat percentage of the people who said ‘yes’ were men and what proportionwere women; instead, the key figure would seem to be what proportion of the

274 BOOK REVIEWS

Table 1: Percentage of people who claimed to understand Corsican in various surveys(data from Table 7.1 recalculated)

Year Men Women

1999 92% (23 out of 25) 80% (20 out of 25)2000 96% (24 out of 25) 80% (20 out of 25)2003 88% (22 out of 25) 76% (19 out of 25)2005 adults 92% (23 out of 25) 76% (19 out of 25)2005 pupils 88% (14 out of 16) 65% (22 out of 34)

male respondents said ‘yes’ compared to what proportion of the females said ‘yes’.And if we recalculate the results for 1999, we find that 92 percent of the mensaid ‘yes’ while only 80 percent of the women said ‘yes’ (so just 8% of the mensaid ‘no’ while 20% of the women said ‘no’). In fact, we can recalculate the datafor all five surveys, as in Table 1 above. When the data is re-analysed in thisway, the difference between the genders becomes rather more apparent, as thepercentage of men claiming to understand the language is larger in every singlesurvey. It remains a mystery why the results were not presented in this way.

In conclusion, although it seems a pity that some things were omitted, suchas one or two maps, more details about the availability and readership of booksand magazines, and some linguistic information about the Corsican language,this book presents a fascinating and authoritative historical account of thefluctuating status of Corsican over the years. Furthermore, there is plenty ofvaluable information from the surveys, even if in some cases the data mightundergo a slightly different interpretation to the one that is given. Overall, notonly does the book provide an interesting overview of the language situationin Corsica, but additionally it offers a valuable study of the consequences ofgovernment neglect, or at times even hostility, towards a heritage language, andalso the limitations and problems associated with trying to support a threatenedlanguage through the education system.

DAVID DETERDING

Universiti Brunei DarusslamJalan Tungku LinkGadong, BE 1410

Bruneidhdeter@gmail.com

SARA MILLS. Language and Sexism. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.2009. 178 pp. Hb (9780521807111) £45.00/$90.00 / Pb (9780521001748)£17.99/$35.99.

Reviewed by JOLANTA SZPYRA-KOZŁOWSKA

The latest book by Sara Mills can be viewed as, on the one hand, an evaluationof earlier work on linguistic sexism and, on the other hand, as an attempt to

BOOK REVIEWS 275

establish a new research agenda for feminist linguistics. In brief, accordingto Mills, time has come to change the focus of investigation from studyingeasily-identifiable forms of overt sexism encoded in language, to less obviousand contextually-determined cases of indirect sexism. This shift is necessarysince overt sexism has largely been reduced by language reform and political-correctness campaigns, and what should be studied now is ‘the beliefs ordiscourses about women and men which are represented in and mediatedthrough language’ (p. 3). Moreover, the former issue, Mills argues, was of primaryconcern to Second Wave Feminism, whereas the latter is more in line with theassumptions and methods of Third Wave Feminism. Thus, the book under reviewhere ‘aims to develop a Third Wave feminist analysis of sexism which still retainssome of the features and benefits of Second Wave feminist analysis’ (p. 34). In theauthor’s view, time has also come to abandon a simplistic understanding of allthe notions relevant to feminist linguistics, such as sexism (direct and indirect),political correctness, language reform, femininity, masculinity, etc. since theyshould be (re)interpreted within the specific cultural and linguistic context inwhich they are employed.

The book consists of six chapters, which include Introduction and Conclusions.All the key ideas are presented in the lengthy Introduction (whose reading issufficient for those who want to know what the book is about but wish to skipthe details) and are developed in the subsequent chapters. Thus, Chapters 2–4 discuss ‘the state of the art’ in research on gender and language and itsimpact, each chapter dealing with overt sexism, language reform, and politicalcorrectness respectively, while Chapter 5 addresses the issue of indirect sexismand its analysis.

In her discussion of past research on linguistic sexism (Chapter 2), Mills(p. 38) points out that in the 1970s and 1980s ‘sexism was defined as languagewhich discriminated against women by representing them negatively or whichseemed to implicitly assume that activities primarily associated with womenwere necessarily trivial’ (p. 38). This view of sexism determined both subsequentresearch and concrete actions that were undertaken.

The aim of feminists therefore was to call attention to the way in which the useof certain language items seemed to systematically discriminate against and causeoffence to women, by compiling lists of such language items and calling for peopleand institutions to avoid such language use. (p. 38)

Mills’ assessment of this approach to sexism in language is somewhat ambivalent.On the one hand, she maintains that ‘lexicographical work has been importantin calling attention to overt sexist language’ (p. 38), on the other hand, shepoints out various problematic aspects of such studies. Thus, she observes thatmany examples of overt sexism have lost their validity and became archaic (as,for instance, the semantic difference between master and mistress), and manydisappeared from use due to feminist campaigns (e.g. changes in the use ofgeneric nouns and pronouns, dictionary definitions of gender-related terms,

276 BOOK REVIEWS

etc.). Secondly, and more importantly, Mills emphasizes that studying languageitems in isolation is a large oversimplification and argues for the need to examinethe context in which a sexist expression is used. For instance, a sexist insult termwhen used by a close friend might acquire a positive value (e.g. dyke and queer inlesbians’ speech). For Mills, even ‘gangsta rap’ lyrics which appear to promoteviolence and overt sexism, should not be understood literally, but in terms ofthe values of a specific culture. She concludes that ‘it is essential that feministscontinue to campaign about overt sexism as it has an impact on the way womenconstruct their sense of their own identity and their positions within institutionsand communities of practice’ (p. 76), but they should take into account the socialand cultural contexts in which it occurs.

In Chapter 3, Mills undertakes an evaluation of nonsexist language reformsthat have taken place over the last 30 years and various responses to thesecampaigns (examined in more detail by Pauwels 1998). She discusses differentstrategies adopted by the reformers, such as:

• analysis and critique of ways of referring to women;• creating alternative gender-neural terms (such as police officer);• coining neologisms (e.g. date rape);• altering grammatical norms to draw attention to discrimination (e.g. using

she as a generic pronoun);• inflecting pejorative words positively; and• responding to sexism with wit and humour.

Mills’ assessment of the effectiveness of language reform, which encountersnumerous problems, is generally positive as, in her view, ‘many sexist formshave changed in recent years due to feminists’ efforts’ (p. 76). However, somethat still persist should be pointed out and fought against. Nevertheless, reducinglinguistic sexism should be approached with caution since it does not eliminateits real sources:

changing the language used about you may not change people’s views about youas a member of a group, because change of that nature takes place over a muchlonger stretch of time, and as a consequence of changes within the society as awhole. (p. 96)

Moreover, a somewhat paradoxical negative side-effect of such campaigns is thatthey have led not so much to the elimination of the problem, but to attempts todisguise it and the appearance of its different, more subtle and less obvious forms,i.e. indirect sexism.

Chapter 4 addresses the issue of political correctness, which Mills considers atype of response to anti-sexist, disability rights and race-awareness campaigns,undertaken mostly by the media in order to ridicule and discredit the efforts of thereformers. She argues that the term ‘political correctness’ is usually associatedwith negative evaluation, restriction and exaggeration while its opposite, i.e.‘political incorrectness’ is valued positively, though both have been used in a

BOOK REVIEWS 277

range of diverse ways. According to Mills, ‘the development of the term “politicalcorrectness” with its negative connotations has undoubtedly made the processof linguistic reform [. . .] much more complicated and problematic’ (p. 108). Sheproceeds to provide a lengthy discussion of the origin, development and variousmeanings and associations of these notions, focusing on their use in the Britishmedia. Mills claims that anti-sexist campaigns are often confused with politicalcorrectness, which is detrimental to the efforts of the reformers who are nowforced to challenge these new developments.

Chapter 5 is based on the author’s conviction that recently ‘overt sexism hasbeen “driven underground” and other more subtle forms of expression which areequally pernicious and discriminatory have been used instead’ (p. 21). These newforms constitute indirect sexism, whose analysis should now be given priorityin feminist linguistics. Thus, the claim that ‘sexism resides in certain words orphrases which can be objectively exposed by feminist linguistics’ (p. 3) is a largeoversimplification since ‘it is, in fact, the belief systems which are articulatedwhich are sexist’ (p. 3). Consequently, what should be analysed are not onlyor primarily cases of overt sexism, encoded in language, but rather instancesof indirect sexism that ‘manifests itself at the level of discourses and patternsin language use’ (p. 154). An example of this phenomenon is provided by thefollowing sentence: ‘Women tennis players get lower prize money at Wimbledonbecause the game is less exciting’, which contains no overtly sexist words, butis clearly sexist in its contents. Other cases involve newspaper articles in whichfemale politicians are frequently described in terms of their appearance andfamily roles (irrelevant for their functions) while male politicians in terms ofwhat they do and say. Mills identifies several types of indirect sexism whichcan be found in jokes, presuppositions (e.g. as in the phrase so, have youwomen finished gossiping?), scripts and metaphors, collocations (e.g. frustratedspinster), conflicting messages and an androcentric perspective (e.g. in reportsof rape).

Mills stresses, however, that indirect sexism is difficult to investigate since ‘itis not always possible to agree on what is sexist, in that sexism is an evaluationof an intent to be sexist rather than an inherent quality of the utterance ortext alone. There will therefore be disagreement about what constitutes sexism’(p. 136). In other words, as ‘often sexism is a hypothesized position which weattribute to others’ (p. 136), differences of opinion and interpretation of specificutterances are likely to occur. Furthermore, Mills claims that studies of overt andindirect sexism can be reconciled by combining Second and Third Wave feministanalyses as ‘each is suited to particular types of sexism.’ (p. 136). Thus, theSecond Wave approach, with its emphasis on generalizations, can adequatelyexamine forms of overt sexism embedded in the language system, whereas ThirdWave feminism, with its focus on specific texts and interactions, is better able toanalyze indirect sexism (within particular contexts). Consequently, she sees herapproach as both localized and generalized.

278 BOOK REVIEWS

While reading Language and Sexism I found myself agreeing with many ofthe author’s views, particularly with her claim that ‘sexism is a very complex,unstable phenomenon’ (p. 154), and that it should be studied in all its complexityand taking into account its various contextual determinants. I also fully agreethat it is important to avoid a simplistic understanding of other key notionspertinent to the study of linguistic sexism. The chapter which I consider tobe particularly valuable is the one on political correctness and its intricaterelationship with anti-sexist campaigns.

My major reservation about the book is that it brings relatively little newmaterial. The simplistic approach to linguistic sexism criticized by Mills seemsto have long been abandoned by the majority of researchers who are generallywell-aware of the need to go beyond the purely systemic approach and adopta pragmatic perspective. Thus, in current practice, investigations of linguisticsexism usually take into account contextual aspects. For instance, Weatherall(2002: 6) states that, ‘if the significance of words depends, at least in part, ontheir position within broader systems of meaning, then sexism in language ismore than a matter of just words.’ Moreover, many other researchers reject thenarrow understanding of sexism contested by Mills. To quote Weatherall again,‘of course sexist language is not just a matter of the ways in which women arerepresented in language. Sexism in language can be considered more broadlyas forms of language use that function to control women, and discourses thatperpetuate social beliefs about women’ (p. 31). Yule (2008: 15) expresses asimilar view:

but sexist language is not only located in the content or meaning of specific words orphrases. It can also be found in dialogue, in our conversations and in the meaningsand communication created by our speech styles or patterns.

It should also be mentioned that many types of indirect sexism discussed byMills have long been researched although not under this heading. For example,more than 30 years ago Key (1975) observed that in newspapers and magazineswomen were more often discussed in terms of their appearance and familyrelationships, whereas men were more often discussed in terms of what they‘did’.

The present reviewer is also somewhat disappointed with the stated focal pointof the book, namely indirect sexism and its analysis. In the 178-page volume fewerthan 30 pages (Chapter 5) are devoted to this issue with surprisingly little actualdata presentation and examination. What is more, after reading this chapter, it isstill not clear to me how indirect sexism could be analysed objectively as, accordingto Mills, what is sexist can only be evaluated locally, in a specific context, the mostimportant part of which is intent to be sexist. It is doubtful whether informationof this kind can be easily accessed by the researcher, particularly in the case ofwritten texts. In fact, Mills herself is aware of these problems and states that,‘there are difficulties in interpreting utterances and texts as unequivocally sexist’

BOOK REVIEWS 279

(p. 152), and ‘all that we can rely on is the hearer’s or reader’s interpretation’which is based on ‘working out intentionality’ (p. 154). Thus, what promised tobe the novel and therefore the most interesting part of the book, has turned outto be, in fact, programmatic in character and leaving the potential researcherwith many doubts as to how various analytic difficulties should be resolved if thescholarly requirement of objectivity were to be preserved.

It should also be pointed out that Language and Sexism, in spite of its verygeneral title and the promise it holds to deal with the named issue globally,is written from a purely western, and, to be more exact, Anglo-Saxon or evenBritish perspective. Thus, the majority of Mills’ observations and comments, herdiscussion of language reform and political correctness in particular, are limitedmostly to English (with only a few references to work on other languages to befound in footnotes), and do not pertain to the situation in many other languagesand societies in which there is even no common awareness of the problemand where the very existence of linguistic sexism is either not recognised orfiercely denied (e.g., see Karwatowska and Szpyra-Kozłowska 2005 on linguisticsexism in Polish). This means that many general claims made in the bookunder review such as ‘the study of sexism sometimes feels outdated and archaic’(p. 9), ‘sexism appears to be something which the general public are concernedabout’ (p. 154), or ‘feminism has achieved its goals of equal opportunitiesand discouraging discrimination’ (p. 19) will come as a total surprise tothose readers who happen to live outside English-speaking and West Europeancountries.

The above critical comments are not meant to discredit the book, which Ifind very useful as a discussion and evaluation of the past and present workon linguistic sexism in English, anti-sexist reform and its public reception. Itis probably the author’s name on the book cover that had raised this reader’sexpectations.

REFERENCES

Karwatowska, Małgorzata and Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska. 2005. Lingwistyka płci: Onai on w jezyku polskim. Lublin, Poland: Wydawnictwo UMCS.

Key, Mary Ritchie. 1975. Male/Female Language. Metuchen, New Jersey: ScarecrowPress.

Pauwels, Anne. 1998. Women Changing Language. London: Longman.Weatherall, Ann. 2002. Gender, Language and Discourse. London: Routledge.

JOLANTA SZPYRA-KOZŁOWSKA

Institute of EnglishMaria Curie-Skłodowska University

Pl. M. C. Skłodowskiej 520-031 Lublin

Polandj.szpyrakozlowska@chello.pl

280 BOOK REVIEWS

NURIA LORENZO-DUS. Television Discourse: Analysing Language in the Media.Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. 234 pp. Pb (9781403934291)£16.99.

Reviewed by ANDREW TOLSON

Television Discourse makes a useful and interesting, if sometimes idiosyncratic,contribution to the literature on media discourse analysis. One unusual, thoughnot unique, aspect is the way its subtitle is interpreted, where the analysis of‘language’ covers much more than a focus on linguistic phenomena, as in thestandard approach to discourse analysis as ‘language-in-use’. Lorenzo-Dus isjust as interested in the visual ‘language’ of television, and here her analysisis informed by media studies. Her transcripts have a dual focus, describing theimage track alongside the spoken discourse. At times too, Lorenzo-Dus looks at‘body language’, particularly in an extended analysis of hand gesturing in theU.S. Presidential campaign debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry.All this gives the book a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary feel which goes beyondsome of the more strictly focused previous work in this area.

Nevertheless, Television Discourse is clearly rooted in what is now an establishedfield of interest in the analysis of ‘broadcast talk’. In particular, the introductionhighlights two main influences. The first is the work that has developed, mainlyin Britain, since the publication of Paddy Scannell’s edited book, Broadcast Talk,in 1991. This has developed his concept of the ‘double articulation’ of broadcasttalk, being addressed from a studio, to its dispersed ‘overhearing audience’. Itincludes the work of Ian Hutchby, Martin Montgomery, Joanna Thornborrowand Andrew Tolson, all of which is extensively referenced here. The second majorinfluence is Erving Goffman. In fact it would be fair to say that when it focuseson the spoken discourse, much of the analysis here is ‘Goffmanesque’: concernedwith participation frameworks, shifts of footing, facework and (im)politeness.The methodology then, is dominated by ‘interactional sociolinguistics’; and it isdifficult to detect much influence from say, Gricean pragmatics, or ConversationAnalysis, to name two other major approaches in this field.

The book’s idiosyncrasies are most apparent in its organisation. Whereasprevious work has either surveyed a range of genres, or focused on one (talkshows, broadcast news) Television Discourse is organised around what Lorenzo-Dus calls ‘features’ which ‘recur in the reference corpus’ and are ‘representativeof wider tendencies’ (p. 9). These features are ‘storytelling’, ‘closeness’, ‘conflict’and ‘persuasion’, in that order. While the first and the last of these featuresare clearly rooted in the venerable scholarly traditions of narratology andrhetoric, the other two are derived from the more recent work on broadcasttalk. ‘Closeness’ is Lorenzo-Dus’ take on sociability; ‘conflict’ relates to the workon confrontation talk pioneered by Hutchby and applied to the analysis ofspectacular confrontations in some forms of talk show. However, I found itdifficult to understand the order in which these features are presented in the

BOOK REVIEWS 281

book. It may be sensible to start with storytelling as the most ancient humandiscourse practice, but it is not clear why persuasion (rhetoric) is positionedlast, and after the section of ‘conflict’ which is, arguably, the most significantrepresentative of a ‘wider tendency’.

Within each ‘feature’, the strategy is to bring together generic developmentsthat might otherwise seem disparate. So ‘storytelling’ covers documentary andoral narratives in talk shows. ‘Closeness’ links the conversationalisation ofnews with celebrity chat and ‘confession’. ‘Conflict’ looks at confrontations intalk shows and adversarial news interviews, highlighting what Lorenzo-Duscharacterises as the growth of ‘confrontainment’. ‘Persuasion’ brings togetherthe aforementioned analysis of body language in presidential debate and the talkof presenters in lifestyle programmes. Lorenzo-Dus argues that these two formsof persuasion are linked through the concept of ‘symbolic goods’, but I have tosay that I found it difficult to follow the logical connection here.

By far the most persuasive and original analysis of these ‘features’ is to be foundin the section on ‘conflict’. Here Lorenzo-Dus traces an apparent cross-over fromspectacular conflict in talk shows, to confrontations in some varieties of ‘newsinterviewing’. The examples she gives of the latter are an edition of Question Timein 2005, where Tony Blair is being challenged by members of the studio audienceover the war in Iraq; and a highly confrontational Channel 4 news interviewbetween Jon Snow and Alastair Campbell, concerning the ‘dodgy dossier’ onweapons of mass destruction. I found myself wondering how representativethese examples were, and indeed whether the Question Time extract could beproperly called a ‘news interview’. However, what they do seem to show isan infiltration of talk-show talk into some varieties of political talk on television.Lorenzo-Dus develops Robin Lakoff’s (2003) discussion of public ‘incivility’ whenshe argues that there is a ‘coarsening’ of public debate in the tendency towards‘confrontainment’.

Another interesting feature of this book is its analysis, along the way, ofstyles of television presentation. Lorenzo-Dus includes examples of the waystalk show hosts co-narrate the life stories of their guests, and the now familiarcross-talk between news anchors and correspondents in live ‘two-ways’. A moreoriginal analysis, drawing again on Goffman, is of the practice of presenter‘ventriloquism’ in documentaries: shifts of footing where presenters enter intothe story worlds they are presenting. (An amusing example of this has DavidAttenborough animating the reactions of a female bird of paradise during acourtship display.) Perhaps the earlier focus on ‘double articulation’ in broadcasttalk, with its primary emphasis on studio interactions, had the effect of turningattention away from the arts of TV presentation. On several occasions here,Lorenzo-Dus brings it back into focus.

Other parts of Television Discourse are less original. Some familiar theoreticalmoves are made, for instance from disclosures in chat shows to Foucault’saccount of confession (but is celebrity chat, with its carefully modulated publicperformance of selected private disclosures, really all that ‘confessional’?); and

282 BOOK REVIEWS

in the section on lifestyle programming, to Giddens’ discussion of that concept.I was disappointed by the discussion of lifestyle TV which seemed to me to bevery derivative of previous media studies work on this genre, for example thefocus on the ‘reveal’ as the climax of narratives of transformation. Perhaps thisis where one of the strengths of this book is also an area of potential weakness.Working as it does at the interface between discourse analysis and media studies,it risks taking on too much, which I began to feel particularly when reading the‘persuasion’ section. There is a brave attempt in the conclusion to construct anoverview of television’s focus on emotion, morality and ‘reality’, but these arepresented as ‘themes’ which run through this diverse corpus of materials, ratherthan an argument about the communicative challenges faced by contemporarytelevision.

At its most illuminating, analysis of media discourse from the perspective ofbroadcast talk has produced two significant achievements. Firstly, studies withtheir roots mainly in Conversation Analysis have shown how features of ordinaryconversation are, in this institutional context, systematically transformed.Second, there has been some work that has made an important contributionto our understanding of how broadcasting works, as a species of mediatedcommunication. Here, preconceptions and prejudices have been challenged,most notably the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ applied to media discourse bysome critical approaches, as Lorenzo-Dus herself acknowledges. However bycomparison with this previous work, Television Discourse is both less systematicand less radical. It offers a series of illustrative observations rather than a freshperspective on communicative features of television.

For those of us working in this field, Television Discourse, in the end, posesthe question – where next? It is basically a bringing together, under generalheadings, of a diversity of previous work, illustrated with fresh examples. Itscomprehensiveness is well illustrated by the range of its references and thevery full bibliography provided, which is virtually a compendium of relevantresearch both in discourse analysis and in media studies. However, confrontationtalk, chat, conversationalisation, sociability – in the eighteen years since thepublication of Broadcast Talk – have now become familiar concepts. Thereremains some unexplored territory, for instance why has no-one examinedthe discourse of children’s TV, where very basic communicative strategies canbe found? It is equally surprising that there is not more work on the gendering oftelevision discourse, following the early identification of ‘women’s issues’ in talkshows. But perhaps it’s also time now to move beyond the familiar conventionsof terrestrial TV to explore the new television of continuous updates, interactiveservices and the ‘net-TV’ of social networks and file-sharing. ‘Broadcast Yourself ’proclaims YouTube, for here ‘double articulation’ is a thing of the past.

REFERENCES

Scannell, Paddy (ed.). 1991. Broadcast Talk. London: Sage.

BOOK REVIEWS 283

Lakoff, Robin T. 2003. The new incivility: Threat or promise? In Jean Aitchison andDiana M. Lewis (eds.) New Media Language. London: Routledge. 36–44.

ANDREW TOLSON

De Montfort UniversityLeicester, U.K.

avtolson@dmu.ac.uk

TEUN A. VAN DIJK. Discourse and Power. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan2008. 308 pp. Pb (9780230574090) £18.99.

Reviewed by LIU LIHUA

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an academic movement in social sciences andlinguistics which focuses on inequality in society and the ways in which discourseis used to realize power and ideology. With its roots in Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Linguistics, Critical Linguistics, and broader critical research linkedto such scholars as Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, JurgenHarbemas, Antonio Gramsci, and others, CDA has become an umbrella term fora wide range of politically involved studies of discourse, with Tuen van Dijk asone of its main advocates and practitioners. In this book – consisting of van Dijk’sseminal papers and previously published articles – the author prefers to use theterm Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to CDA. CDS is dissociated from any specificmethodology, allowing researchers to adopt any discourse analytic methods thatsuit their particular aims. CDS is multidisciplinary in nature and combines threekey dimensions: discourse, cognition and society, combining with the historicaland cultural factors shaping social reality.

An important part of van Dijk’s work centres on the formulation of a theory ofcontext, going beyond an autonomous analysis of text and talk. Thus, context isdefined as mental models which not only include the usual categories of socialsituations, but also feature the cognitive aspects of the situation. Context is thenrealized as the mentally represented structure of those properties of the socialsituation that are relevant for the production of comprehension of discourse.Specifically, context consists of such categories as the overall definitions of thesituation, setting, ongoing actions, participants in various communicative, socialor institutional roles, as well as their mental representations: goals, knowledge,opinions, attitudes and ideologies. Van Dijk’s model of context controls theway the speaker draws the utterance to the communicative environment; therelationship of discourse and context is not deterministic, rather, discourse andsociety are mediated through social representations in the participants’ mentalmodels/contexts in which knowledge, attitude, and ideology are included. Thesocial representation is expressed in discourse via the mental models of individualparticipants. Thus, context models are the general interface between society,situation, interaction and discourse.

For van Dijk, CDS is specifically interested in abuses of power and associatedforms of domination, such as racism; these themes dominate the book. Key terms

284 BOOK REVIEWS

such as ‘power’, ‘domination’, and ‘access’ are introduced in detail in Chapters 1–3. Chapter 4, titled ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, discusses the principles of CDS.Van Dijk proposes a distinction between two ‘levels’ of CDS: ‘micro’ (i.e. languageuse, discourse, verbal interaction and communication); and ‘macro’ (i.e. power,dominance and inequality between social groups). The bridging of the two levels –principally discourse and power – takes the form of control of certain kinds ofdiscourse. Power is then realized through the controlling of context as well as thecontent of discourse and its structures, such as topic, genre, headlines, discoursestrategies, etc.

Chapters 5 and 6 make explicit links between discourse and racism, especiallyin relation to van Dijk’s well-known ideas on ‘elite’ racism, the denial of racism,strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, and soon. In constructing the Other, topics, stories and argumentation may thusbe used to represent minorities or immigrants ‘as a problem or a threat toour country, territory, space, housing, employment, education, norms, values,habits or language’ (p. 153), while such racist discourses are hedged, mitigated,excused, or downright denied, for the sake of face management.

The remaining chapters of the book offer a mixture of theoretical and empiricalstudies on several aspects of discourse/power nexus. Chapter 7 outlines a socio-cognitive approach needed to account for the interface between the social andindividual properties of texts, or, put differently, between political discourse andpolitical cognition. In Chapter 8, van Dijk analyses the rhetoric of the formerSpanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, in his 2003 parliamentary speech insupport of the U.S. military invasion of Iraq. Chapter 9 takes a multidisciplinaryapproach to an account of ‘discursive manipulation’, i.e. a form of powerabuse or domination, which, according to van Dijk, is realized discursively aspolarized structures of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentationexpressing ideological conflict. Manipulation involves enhancing the power,moral superiority and credibility of the speaker and discrediting the ‘Other’.Finally, continuing the analysis of Aznar’s discourse, Chapter 10 examines the‘pragmatics of lying’ in relation to context and knowledge in interaction.

This book is very useful in bringing together van Dijk’s earlier, well-knownwork in CDS, and in continuing to promote the interdisciplinary approach toanalyzing data. It will be useful to anyone wishing to engage with the study ofdiscourse and power, or needing a refresher course on van Dijk’s contribution tothe field.

LIU LIHUA

Beijing Foreign Studies UniversitySchool of English and International Studies

No. 2, North West 3rd Ring RoadHaidian Distirct

Beijing, China 100089llihua08@yahoo.com.cn

Review of Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries

Documents