Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 12:54:31 -0400 From: Laura Buechel Subject: Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings
Paulston, Christina Bratt and G. Richard Tucker, ed. (2003) Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings, Blackwell Publishing, Linguistics: The Essential Readings 3.
Laura Loder Buechel, Paedagogische Hochschule Zuerich, Switzerland
"Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings", edited by Christina Bratt Paulston and G. Richard Tucker, is an introduction to many different aspects of sociolinguistics for students and others interested in the field. It is a collection of 29 papers organized into 11 parts, each part headed by a classic in the specific subfield. The parts are then followed with mostly more recent articles, some written especially for this reader, by researchers and educators who have also helped to define the field of sociolinguistics throughout the past 50 years. Each part is introduced by the editors, articles are presented, and questions for discussion are posed.
The two articles in Part I: History of Sociolinguistics describe the development from anthropology, ethnology, sociology and linguistics into what we term today as sociolinguistics, although there is still much room for discussion if we want to identify what topics really belong to this field. Interesting discussions presented about the politics of certain times (racial discrimination in 1960s (Shuy, 1960) in the US and Marxism in the USSR (Calvet)) lead to discussions about research questions posed by linguists, such as differences in dialects and the relationship between ethnic group and social class and dialect.
In the first article of Part II: Ethnography of Speaking, Hymes (1986) puts forth a descriptive theory of individual communities and groups to include the speech community, which is twofold: a community that shares "rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety (p. 36)." Pagliai (2000) describes the tradition of the Contrasto in the speech community of Tuscany. This bantering (perhaps a "speech event", Hymes 1986), performed at public events such as festivals (perhaps a "speech situation", Hymes 1986) between two opponents having a heated poetic debate, demonstrates that participants share the rules of conduct, they both banter through singing and acting and they perhaps share one linguistic variety. However, insofar as being a homogeneous speech community, they identify themselves very locally, through the naming of places, thus Hymes's speech community can be narrowed down to a very small geographic area.
The articles in Part III: Pragmatics help to demonstrate the breadth of the topic. This part of the book delves into narrative analysis, conversational analysis and address studies through analyzing speech acts. Although Labov and Waletzky's 1967 paper was an important stepping stone to today's work, Schegloff's (1997)critique leads us to what wasn't done and what still needs to be done in regards to narrative analysis. We can see the influence of Labov on Holmes's (1998) analysis (and in Gumperz's work (1982)) of Maori stories when she uses his structural framework in her study of Maori and Pakeha cultural differences in narrative. In this direction, Gumperz (1982) analyzes conversations to find linguistically based "cultural miscommunications" principally between American- and Indian-English speakers. Brown and Gilman (1960) discuss the possible history of the pronouns of address (tu or vos) and the interaction between the choice of pronoun and rank -- or amount of power. Finally, Holmes (1998) analyzes compliments and finds that they, too, are also used as power plays and are culture and gender loaded. The two articles in Part IV: Language and Gender touch upon the respective issues, and that of power as well.
In Part V: Language Variation, Labov's (1975) article is still relevant today and is perhaps summed up with his own quote "But before we train working class speakers to copy middle class speech patterns wholesale, it is worth asking just which aspects of this style are functional for learning and which are matters of prestige and fashion. ... unfortunately we have not yet begun to answer it (p. 249)." Perhaps a step in trying to answer this question is Wolfram's (2000) article about standardizing vernacular languages. Bringing sociolinguistics to the level of the individual, is Johnstone's (1991) paper about the individualization of dialogues by polltakers in public opinion surveys. Reinecke's 1937 article comprises Part VI: Pidgins and Creoles, which also discusses communication strategies, language and power, and jargon.
The previous chapters lead nicely into Part VII: Individual Bilingualism, which poses similar questions about the value of a language, the power involved in being a speaker of a certain language and questions the educational system. Lambert (1967) puts forth questions of identity negotiation and value of the language through his research of impressions French and English speaking Canadians have of one another. Cummins describes how BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) are similar to many other conceptual distinctions, why these distinctions are important to have, and then defends the distinction. Finally, MacSwan and Rolsted offer an alternative to BICS and CALP, which in their opinion leads to a "deficit view of children in the context of native language" (p. 337).
In Part VIII: Diglossia, Ferguson (1959) sees diglossia as a dynamic ("developing from various origins and eventuating in different language situations", p. 34.), though historically stable, language situation. He defines situations in which the High and Low varieties of German (Swiss), Arabic (Egyptian), Greek (Modern) and Creole (Haitian) are used. He emphasizes the importance of not always analyzing the standard form of a language, we can learn so much from the vernacular. Fishman (1967) expands upon Ferguson's work by looking at the combinations of bilingualism and diglossia. Finally, Hudson (1991) looks at both Ferguson's and Fishman's work and in an attempt to find a working definition of diglossia -- returns to Ferguson.
From diglossia, we turn to Part IX: Group Bilingualism, where Fishman (1990) discredits assumptions that linguistic heterogeneity contributes to civil strife, arguing rather that there are many positive consequences of linguistic heterogeneity in regards to policies. Bratt Paulston (1992) continues this discussion by looking at successful and unsuccessful policies in Catalonia, Tanzania, and Peru as well as reasons behind language shift. In Part X: Language Policies and Planning, Haugen (1966) sets guidelines for defining a standard language, which was the groundwork for work in the 1970s on language planning in developing countries. Nahir (1984) elaborates upon this in establishing eleven language planning goals from examples taken around the world. Finally, Hornberger (1994) describes the role of developing mother tongue literacy in primary school.
This book is concluded by Part XI: Multilingualism, Policies and Education, with two articles (Tucker 2001 and Bratt Paulston 1997) which put into question movements such as "English-Only", and discuss instruction in the native language of people in different political situations as well as other questions to help language planners. No reasonable person doubts the benefits of having two or more well- developed languages, and how leaders of nations and communities plan or not plan is essential to every individual's success.
CRITIQUE
The intended audience of the book is precisely as the authors state in the preface -- for beginning students or those interested in the field (as long as they are familiar with sociolinguistic jargon) and also to be used with a textbook. The introductions to the parts and the discussion questions, however, make the book manageable without one. It is also good for those of us who work in the field and have not read all the direct sources.
Insofar as organization is concerned, perhaps the biographical information about the author (Notes on Authors) as well as reference information (Acknowledgements) could better been placed with the article or at the introduction to each part, not all at the beginning of the reader in two different sections. While the introductions often gave the contexts of the times, it would have been easier to associate them to the article like this. One question that remains is when Calvet published his contribution to this reader. The index is well done and the recommendations for further reading in the introductions are excellent.
The authors mention that perhaps first part (History of Sociology) should be read last (p. 2), but perhaps best would be to leave it where it is and to recommend that it be reread at the end of the course or work with the book. In Part VIII, the authors gave a good tip about knowing definition of writers when reading article, and this could have been mentioned about other terms, such as bilingual.
The Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter are mostly very thought provoking. Part III, especially, provides many opportunities for students to make their own analyses, and throughout the book, there are many questions posed which refer students to outside of the book -- to interview friends, neighbors and foreign language speakers. Moreover, references made in the discussion questions to previous chapters ties the articles together nicely.
It certainly must not have been easy to choose among so many seminal works and to structure the book into parts. There have been many, many articles related to pragmatics, and also to the chapters on bilingualism. Some of the articles could easily belong to different parts (Holmes (1998) in Part III could well belong to Part IV, for example and the two articles in Part XI could have gone into the previous chapter). The recommended readings were a good way to broaden the selection.
Although methods of measuring are more sophisticated nowadays, most of the issues addressed in this reader still exist today and there is still much work to be done. Hopefully, further volumes will be published which address more recent work and which shed a new light on these discussions.
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