LINGUIST List 9.1602

Sat Nov 14 1998

Books: Sociolinguistics

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Linguistics Mailbox, Speaking Through the Silence, Laine A. Berman
2. Damon Zucca, A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code Switching, Jeff MacSwan
3. Linguistics Mailbox, Social Science and conversation Analysis, Harvey Sacks

SPEAKING THROUGH THE SILENCE: Narratives, Social Conventions, and
Power in Java
Laine A. Berman, School of Australian and International Studies, Deakin
University

Uncovering the structures and functions of conversational narratives
uttered within natural social networks, Laine Berman shows how
working-class Javanese women discursively construct identity and
meaning within the rigid constraints of an hierarchical social
order. She does this by identifying the silences, the "unsaid", and by
revealing both the structure and function of silence in terms of its
indexical reference to local meaning. It is here that the force of the
Javanese language as used in everyday interaction shows itself to be
an extremely potent philosophical entity as well as a means of social
control. Thus, at least in regard to the urban poor, the book boldly
questions the difference between traditional definitions of Javanese
elegance and oppression. This study will contribute to our
understanding of the social consequences of language use, to the
linguistic knowledge of Indonesia and Java, and to such basic
linguistic issues as narrative structure and function, speech levels
and styles, and indexicality features.

(Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 19)
October 1998 276 pp.; 8 halftones
0-19-510888-4 $65.00
Oxford University Press
 
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For more information about Linguistics titles from Oxford:
Visit the Oxford University Press USA web site at
http://www.oup-usa.org or 
e-mail: linguisticsoup-usa.org
 

MacSwan, Jeff; A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code
Switching; 0-8153-3274-2, cloth; pages 329, $71; Garland Publishing;
Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics

This book explores the consequences of Chomsky's Minimalist Program
for the data of bilingual language mixture. In the model developed,
lexical items may be drawn from the lexicon of either language to
introduce features into the numeration which must be checked for
convergence in the same way as monolingual features must be checked
(or must not "mismatch"). The author's proposed Disjunction Theorem
further provides that code switching is impossible in the computation
N' since the rule ordering (or constraint ranking) associated with the
phonological component is not preserved under union (code switching).
An extensive discussion shows that the analyses of previous
"constraint-oriented" proposals may be derived from the basic
feature-checking apparatus of this system. An original corpus of
Spanish-Nahuatl code switching data is additionally presented.

	The work also discusses applied issues in bilingualism,
touching upon assessment, tracking of minority-language students, and
notions of bilingual competence and attributed language "deficits."
Here the author contends that code switchers are exquisitely sensitive
to extremely subtle requirements of both their languages, just as
monolinguals are sensitive to theirs. This book will be of interest to
scholars in linguistics, bilingualism, and language education.

E-mail: infogarland.com

HARVEY SACKS: Social Science and Conversation Analysis
David Silverman, Goldsmiths College, London
 
"Harvey Sacks, as the say, was an original. David Silverman provides a
thoughtful, lucid account of his penetrating work. I urge anyone
concerned with occuring speech to read this book. One's sense of how
to interpret what is said will be changed. Even if one does not adopt the
approach, one will have an essential landmark and reference point to
inform what one does oneself."--Dell Hymes,University of Virginia

"David Silverman is to be thanked for leading the novice and the expert
through the complex, heretofore underground corpus of Harvey Sacks's
work. Finally, the social science community can study and learn from
Sacks's pathbreaking studies of talk and conversational analysis. The
social science community in the field of everyday life studies owes
Silverman a great debt."--Norman K. Denzin,University of Illinois

This is the first book-length introduction to the work of Harvey Sacks, a
highly influential sociologist who prior to his tragic death in 1975
developed the theories that came to be known as Conversation Analysis
and ethnomethodology -- theories that have grown to become extremely
popular within linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology. This
volume should be of interest to both students and scholars of
Conversation Analysis and Sacks' work.

October 1998 232 pp.
0-19-521473-0 paper $19.95
0-19-521472-2 cloth $39.95
Oxford University Press
 
__________________________________________________________
For more information about Linguistics titles from Oxford:
Visit the Oxford University Press USA web site at
http://www.oup-usa.org or 
e-mail: linguisticsoup-usa.org
 

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1998 Contributors