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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, Max Weinreich, in a much cited quotation, observed that a language is a dialect with an army and navy. In making this pronouncement, he underscored how the political status of the speakers of a variety influences its perceived status as language or dialect. After all, language is a contested entity, and its status is often bolstered when governments establish a standard variety of their language (or languages) to be taught in schools, used in official documents, and promoted for use in the media. This notion becomes apparent as we move through the chapters of Aneta Pavlenkos edited collection Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries as its contributors illustrate how various countries negotiate a new linguistic reality following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. In her introductory chapter, Pavlenko provides an overview of the language policies and practices in the Russian Empire and the U.S.S.R. Following that, she traces 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 and Uzbekistan). Adopting a critical perspective, she points out that the post-Soviet context offers several theoretical challenges to contemporary sociolinguistic theory as it requires us to interrogate prevailing notions of postcolonialism, diaspora and minority language rights. For one, the term postcolonial, she contends, needs to be unpacked to better represent the multiple facets of Soviet language and education policies. Next, she questions the appropriacy of categorizing Russian speakers as members of a diaspora as these speakers do not see Russia as their homeland. A re-articulation of their status is also necessary, especially in light of their multiethnic makeup. Finally, Pavlenko notes that the traditionally dichotomous view of linguistic majorities and minorities begs a more nuanced understanding, given that Russian has evolved into a regional lingua franca and a mother tongue for many people in these countries. In fact, the investigation of the minority rights of speakers of Russian, now a postcolonial language, becomes a theme in this collection which is set against a historical context 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
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Belarus a country where the language of the ethnic majority (Belarusian) is being lost in favor of Russian. The regulation of language choice comes under scrutiny in this chapter as we are led to see how the absence of individual language choice in all the spheres of Belarusian society is the result of a compendium of factors: a one-sided interpretation of existing legislation in favor of Russian, the closure of Belarusian-language classes in bilingual schools and the transformation of these schools into exclusively Russian-language schools, and the execution of top-down initiatives which limit the use of Belarusian at universities. The aggregation of these forces, coupled with the stigmatization of 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 in Chapter 2, Bilaniuk and Melnyk paint a different picture in Chapter 3, which focuses on Ukraine. Following a brief history of language policy and education in Ukraine, we learn that Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism in this country is rooted in a turbulent history, resulting in Ukrainian being established as its sole official language in 1989. The lack of choice as depicted in the previous chapter contrasts with its general availability in Ukraine. Particularly interesting is what the authors identify as the increasingly popular practice of non-accommodating bilingualism (p. 84) which allows speakers to use their preferred language in a conversation. Equally noteworthy is how Ukrainian pop culture is helping fuel the increased use of Ukrainian, and how many young people take up Ukrainian as a form of grass-roots resistance to perceived historical injustices. Citing 2004 census data of reported native language and language of everyday use, Ciscel in Chapter 4 points to the dominant use of Russian as a lingua franca in Moldova. This pattern of use is intriguing given that the language of instruction in 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 irregular enforcement of the Moldovan language in school and the general perception of Russian as a prestigious language. Consequently, as Ciesel points out, it is still common to find Moldovan/Romanian speakers switching to Russian as soon as a participant in an interchange uses a Russian word or phrase (p. 111). Indeed, finding that delicate balance between strengthening the status of the titular languages without imposing new linguistic regimes in the process of building new nation-states is an uphill task. This is evident in Bulajeva and Hogan-Bruns chapter (Chapter 5) on Lithuania. Their analysis of the current sociolinguistic situation in Lithuania reveals how its inclusive language policies have helped foster multilingualism in the country. Particularly encouraging are the high pass rates of non-native speakers of Lithuania who have taken the state examination for employment in the public and semi-public sector, and the autonomy granted to students in school to use their mother tongue in non-formal educational settings. While the reader is hopeful about the linguistic situation in Lithuania, a certain level of bleakness descends on Rannuts chapter (Chapter 6) on Estonia.
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The governments agenda to introduce Estonian as the official language and a common language, and its plan to arrange minority languages in a hierarchy and regulate them has resulted in a linguistic fracturing of Estonian society; this is evidenced by the little contact between Russian and Estonian speakers. Equally distressing is the impact of such a policy on sections of the Russian-speaking population who have encountered a decreased competitiveness in the economic marketplace, and the palpable reality of losing their citizenship because Russian speakers are expected to pass a language test administered in Estonian to acquire citizenship. 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 Eastern European countries, the remaining three chapters shift the readers focus to Central Asia. In Chapter 7, Smagulova explains the challenges involved in restoring the status of the Kazakh language. Hurdles include the lack of fluency and literacy skills among government employees, and the lack of specialists in the area of assessment. Smagulova also reports on the findings of an INTASfunded project conducted in several Central Asian countries. Drawing on a sample comprising 2,255 respondents from five ethnic groups, the survey data reveal that Russian remains the dominant language of communication across all domains. This finding, however, is offset somewhat by the increased use of Kazakh among younger Kazakhstanis for interpersonal communication, thereby indicating that Russian as a language of the private domain is being challenged. 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. In Chapter 8, Orusbaev, Musttajoki, and Protassova point out that Kyrgystans official language, Russian, sits alongside its state language, Kyrgyz. While the latter is endowed with national and symbolic functions, the former is more highly valued. This is conveyed through the authors observation, to be well educated means to be acquainted with Russian literature and to speak Russian (p. 218). Orusbaev et al. also report on findings from their INTAS survey which targeted 16 to 17-year-old students and 55 to 65-year-old retirees. Like their Estonian and Kazakh counterparts (see Chapters 6 and 7, respectively), the results demonstrate that the younger generation view multilingualism positively, compared to the older generation who has come to accept the status quo. This represents a promising turn of events as it suggests that speaking Kyrgyz is becoming increasingly important for Kyrgyz people. In line with the high status accorded to Russian as seen in the preceding chapters, Nagzibekova, in the last chapter (Chapter 9), underscores its prestige level while also emphasizing that it is used as a language of inter-ethnic communication. Given that knowledge of Russian among Tajik speakers is influenced by their level of education, occupation, and social status, we also learn that Tajik-Russian bilingualism is most common among the well educated and those who work in multi-ethnic work places where Russian functions as a
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lingua franca. Equally fascinating is how investment in and subsequent returns from learning Russian seem to extend beyond Tajik shores: Russian-speaking parents send their children to Russian-language schools because they want to work in Russia, while temporary migrants who leave Tajikistan to work in the Russian Federation seek to learn it as they are required to demonstrate at least basic proficiency in Russian. Over the nine chapters, the reader is introduced to language developments in a 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 of speakers of a postcolonial language such as Russian is complexified in this volume. Much has been written about the linguistic imperialism associated with the spread of English (cf. Phillipson 1992) and the attempts to resist such hegemonic overtures (cf. Canagarajah 1999), but one thing that particularly stood out in this collection is how some authors (e.g. Pavlenko, Rannut) turn linguistic russification on its head by illustrating how the Russian-speaking populations in these countries find themselves at the short end of the stick following the break up of the U.S.S.R. While this volume breaks new ground by acquainting the larger scholarly community to the post-Soviet countries, one cannot help but notice the lack of qualitative detail deployed in the collection. Admittedly, efforts were made to present an overview of the sociolinguistic profile of these countries by invoking census data (e.g. Chapters 5 and 8), survey data (e.g. Chapters 7 and 8), and data from other government departments (e.g. Chapter 3). Equally commendable was the insertion of photographs (e.g. Chapters 2, 5, and 8) to illustrate how multilingualism is manifested in public street signs. However, it would have been appreciated if the authors had gone one step further and supplied the readers with examples of multilingualism as enacted in conversations. In particular, it would have been helpful to have seen how Russian as a lingua franca is used among the people of these countries. This would also have provided much needed evidence to 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 governed by the domain of use. Interestingly, the need for a greater use of qualitative tools is not missed by some of the contributors to the collection. For instance, Smagulova concedes, . . . the quantitative approach does not permit us to see speakers as units of analysis and downplays the agency of the respondents. By focusing on the broad picture, we miss peoples local experiences . . . (p. 195). A similar sentiment is echoed by Orusbaev et al. who acknowledge the limitations of 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 different countries, the linguistic and ideological factors that shape attitudes towards particular languages, and the regional and global forces such as migration and education, the authors bring us up close and personal with how the linguistic
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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 that is increasingly defined by multilingualism and characterized by flows (cf. Heller 2008).

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 sociolinguistic theory and practice. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12: 504524. Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
PETER DE COSTA University of Wisconsin-Madison 600 N. Park Street, Madison WI 53706 U.S.A. decosta@wisc.edu

H. SAMY ALIM, AWAD IBRAHIM AND ALASTAIR PENNYCOOK (eds.). Global Linguistic Flows: 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 Hip Hop Culture(s), paying close attention to creative linguistic choices, styles, and varieties . . . (p. 9). Many of the collections scholars situate their work within sociolinguistic theories of styling, crossing, language ideology, and concepts of linguistic anthropology such as identification as an ongoing process. They also spin their own theories: conversational sampling; split styles; dusty foot philosophy; to name a few. This work is at the cutting-edge of innovative scholarship in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and applied linguistics. These scholars are attempting the very challenging task of analyzing what is arguably the most important verbal art and musical sociocultural movement of our times Hip Hop, which is defined by practitioners as a worldview, a lifestyle that 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 a prime site for the study of globalization, localization, transnationalism, cultural flow, syncretism, indigenization, hybridity, (im)migration, . . . diaspora among others (p. 4). The collections scholars investigate: Just how is it that Hip Hop Culture has become a primary site of identification and self-understanding for youth around the world? and What linguistic resources do youth manipulate, (re)appropriate, and sometimes (re)create, in order to fashion themselves as members of a [Global Hip Hop Nation]? (p. 5). The volumes scholars are
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committed to the potential of social transformation through intellectual inquiry (p. 5). Alims introduction goes a long way to enliven and inform Hip Hop studies with 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 researchers 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 representative cultural 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 linguistic and cultural innovations that are taking place globally, there is a tendency to de-emphasize the globalized African American and Afrodiasporic discursive foundations of Hip Hop. This is a tension that surfaces throughout several of the chapters. A goal of this brief review is to insist on the African American and Afrodiasporic foundations of Hip Hop as a tool to understanding the complexity of other Hip Hops. The book is divided into twelve tracks (chapters) which are organized around two themes. Disk 1 (section 1) contains six essays, the focus of which is Styling locally, styling globally: The globalization of language and culture in a global Hip Hop nation. The theme for the six essays which comprise Disk 2 (section 2) is The power of the word: Hip Hop poetics, pedagogies, and the politics of language in global contexts. Alastair Pennycook and Tony Mitchell have the lead chapter, in the Styling locally, styling globally section, which sets the tone for many of the books essays. The authors interest in locality is illuminated by subjects of their study such as Somali-Canadian MC KNaan, whose 2006 Juno Award winning CD Dusty Foot Philosopher critiques the hegemonic outlook of the first world camera and its Western gaze, which disseminates images of Africans as shoeless dustyfoot paupers to the rest of the wired world. KNaan explains that though people may be poor they have dignity and philosophize about the world the same as well-read and well-traveled people do. Pennycook and Mitchell expand this image into their theory of Hip Hop as a means for localization and groundedness. They explore 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), local philosophies of global significance, and the already local or the coevalness of origins. Pennycook and Mitchell argue that conceptualizing African American Hip Hop as dominant, especially in non-English-language media,
fails to engage with the different circuits of flow through which Hip Hop circulates globally . . . , the diversity of local appropriations of Hip Hop, or the coevalness of origins and the roles of mimicry and enactment (what may appear very similar may not in fact be so). (p. 28)
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Pennycook and Mitchell go on to state that they are not out to deny the influence that African American Hip Hop has had on global Hip Hop. They contend that a focus on similarities should not obscure differences and should not assume directionality. They compare their view with the treatment of Creole languages. They argue that seeing AAVE as a subvariety of English, for example, assumes nondivergence rather than a Creole-based language carrying numerous elements of African languages (p. 29) reconverging with English, and that apparent similarity should not assume unidirectional spread. To carry this argument further and in a direction that Pennycook and Mitchell might resist, Hip Hop is derived from Afrodiasporic culture, emanating from West and Central Africans and their resettlement in and among other societies 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 and Afro-American practices for comparative and multi-dimensional analyses of specific sociocultural, sociolinguistic, historical and political features in Africa, the Americas, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia and Asia. A major approach to the study of African Diasporic practice has focused on continuities among Black communities, the global flows of Black ways of knowing, doing and being. The dispersion of Black popular musical idioms as repositories of knowledge and experience are an example of that process and a primary vehicle for transmission of ideas flowing in many directions throughout the Diaspora. As such, Afrodiasporic studies focus on Afrodiasporic complexities. The cultural crossings of Black Jamaicans and Black Americans is an example mentioned by the authors. What both approaches (continuities and complexities) have in common from a Black linguistics perspective (Makoni, Smitherman, Ball and Spears 2003) is their interest in moving speakers of Black languages toward collective liberation. Pennycook and Mitchells interest in diasporicity of Hip Hop seems to stop at the dynamics of change, struggle and appropriation (p. 27). A related question that lingered in my mind as I read this chapter is how does the co-present origins argument work for White global Hip Hoppers? It seems to me that it has the potential to erase the Afrodiasporic contribution. This is a point that one of the chapters authors, Pennycook, does not promote, (as indicated in footnote 3) but that follows from the line of argument. Jannis Androutsopoulos chapter approaches Hip Hop from a three discourse sphere perspective (artistic expression, media discourse, fans and activists/tertiary texts). He argues that English (including stylized African American English) is a main resource for constructing glocal Hip Hop identities, which gain their meaning as local performances of a global cultural paradigm . . . (pp. 4445). Androutsopolous applies Fiskes concept of vertical intertextuality 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 these resources in their computer-mediated discourse. In his analysis of primary
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sphere/artistic expression, he examines the cultural referencing patterns coming out of Afrodiasporic African American traditions of the dozens and rap. He identifies them as genre-typical as they are employed in German and Greek, for example, emphasizing their local referents. He argues that referencing in 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 to North American audiences. From a Black linguistics perspective, I see that these diverse communities have appropriated Afrodiasporic ways of knowing, being and doing and encourage Hip Hoppers from any racial or ethnic group to use their available cultural tools as a means of expression. Androutsopolous observes that As rap enters new speech communities, the original predominance of African American English is replaced by new, and often more complex, sociolinguistic conditions (p. 50). This is particularly interesting because a pervasive underlying language ideology of Hip Hop is tricksterism (Richardson 2006). Hip Hop is a trickster discourse which transforms language in and out of different intertextual chains registers, dialects, languages and styles to the users purposes of selfactualization. As Smitherman ([1977]1986: 103) explains, while the rituals of black discourse have an overall formulaic structure, individuals are challenged to do what they can within the traditional mold. Further, improvisation is characteristic of Black music and culture (Dance 2002: 7475). Thus, the surface absence of African American English in Hip Hop discourse or Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) (Alim 2006) does not negate its pervasive influence on the ideological force of linguistic expression. Jennifer Roth-Gordons piece, Conversational sampling, race trafficking, and the invocation of the Gueto in Brazilian Hip Hop, reveals similar conundrums that arise in the study of global Hip Hop. Roth-Gordon relies on Androutsopolous third sphere of Hip Hop discourse (the fan-activist context) and Osumares theory of connective marginalities to analyze how Brazilian Hip Hop 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). RothGordons conversational sampling includes how rappers and rap fans actively construct transnational connections by reworking well-known and familiar references (p. 66). She focuses on rap lyrics and their recontextualization in the conversations of poor Black male fans. She asserts that conversational sampling becomes part of a glocal communicative competence, where transnational linguistic practices inform local identity construction and style (p. 69). Race trafficking is important to her argument, which she defines as examples of shared marginality [that] must be shaped and even invented. This is most obvious in politically conscious Hip Hops embrace of U.S. ideas of institutional racism and a Black-White racial dichotomy (p. 70). Roth-Gordon argues that Brazils practices of racial cordiality, required assimilation of racial minorities, national discourses promoting racial democracy, miscegenation,
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whitening . . . [and] lack of race talk . . . all suggest that race does not explain the shocking levels of disparity [in Brazil] (p.71), and thus direct discussion of Brazilian racism by Brazilian rappers is a forged connection with U.S. Blacks. Though Brazil styles itself as a racial democracy, its institutional racism cannot be denied. Petronilha Beatriz Goncalves e Silvas (2004) discussion of citizenship and education makes this point through connecting salary differentials between white and black Brazilians to educational inequality. The author writes:
This situation which both generates and is generated by specific modes of thought and behavior, discriminatory on the part of some, submissive, resentful, or accommodated on the part of others is rooted in the understanding that some Brazilians, the descendants of Europeans, are the bearers of a more properly civilized culture and of more enlightened human values. Thus, all other Brazilians should, if not become the same as the others, at least imitate them to the best of their abilities in order to become properly civilized as well. (p. 187)

Roth-Gordons emphasis is on how Brazilian youths employment of strategic essentialism 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 create these connections through acts of strategic essentialism that highlight as much as they erase. This recognition must be produced, and it is worth asking what 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 Hop discourse to critique hegemonic Brazilian discourses that strive to shape their reality. Black Brazilians know the history and they are exploiting ideas that they glean from African Americans to see race mixture as an obstacle to racial consciousness and racial equality. In other words, if we are all ok, why do we need whitening? From a Black linguistics perspective, how does Roth-Gordons very sophisticated and interesting analysis itself work toward social transformation? As space does not permit discussion of more of the books essays, I will discuss H. Samy Alims chapter from Disc 2, The power of the word. Alims chapter is titled Creating an empire within an empire: Critical Hip Hop language pedagogies and the role of sociolinguistics. I devote the remainder of the review to this chapter because it answers a very important question that I get from my teachers in applied linguistics for teachers of language arts course: How will linguistics help me become a better language arts teacher? If we define better in terms of changing the system which fails far too many students of color, Alims essay seeks to move the profession toward social transformation. Alim shows that use of Hip Hop language engages students and their teachers in the study of language variation as viable curriculum. He is interested in reversing the laws of the dominant linguistic market, which is based on a sociolinguistic order that pits standard language forms against non-standard ones. Alim argues that
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linguists and educators are obligated to present the current social and linguistic reality to students who are economically, politically, and culturally subjugated in mainstream institutions (p. 214). Alim presents four pedagogical initiatives and 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 in Black Culture. This theme uses real talk to socialize students into awareness of sociolinguistic variation and is similar to Wolframs dialect awareness program. Students listen to tape recordings and transcribe what they hear. They notice that variation is inherent and also systematic. The Language in my Life theme teaches students how to conduct ethnographies of their own speech and they are taught basic sociolinguistic concepts such as speech situation, speech event, and speech act. This approach validates students own language as a subject of worth and is central to students (metalinguistic) education. The Hip Hopography theme instructs students in the study of peer-group culture. Alim provides students with relevant transcripts and invites their analysis of language change. He shows students ways to document language through methods used in Smithermans Black Talk. They use surveys, song lyrics, various media, interviews etc. that actually engage students into becoming archivists of Black culture, and though they learn academic methods and language, the exercises are far from merely academic. A major emphasis in all of this work is making students and teachers aware of power relations, and how linguistic discrimination works among the linguistically privileged and marginalized groups of society. Alim uses various popular media to engage students in the topics and analytical procedures. A major thrust of Alims work centers on ideological combat. He demonstrates how Critical Hip Hop Language Pedagogies operationalize the vast body of research on language for the purposes of raising the linguistic and social consciousness of all students [and their teachers] (p. 227). Alims work suggests that we need to revamp language education globally, as youth the world over are experiencing the same kind of reinvention of language in their local contexts. Teachers and schools 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 in language, culture, and globalization.

REFERENCES
Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. New York: Routledge.
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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 and recognition. In James A. Banks (ed.) Diversity and Citizenship Education: Global Perspectives. Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley. 185214. Makoni, Sinfree, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha Ball and Arthur Spears. 2003. Black Linguistics: 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 University Columbus, Ohio U.S.A. richardson.486@osu.edu

ROBERT J. BLACKWOOD. The State, the Activists and the Islanders: Language Policy on 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 emerged from its status as the L language in a diglossic relationship with Tuscan Italian to its subsequent position under severe threat from the encroachment of French in all linguistic domains, though it concludes that the danger of Corsican disappearing entirely may recently have receded somewhat as a result of official efforts to support the language by teaching it as a school subject. There are eight chapters in the book. The first six trace the historical development of Corsican from its origins as a colloquial cousin of Tuscan Italian, through the increasing domination of French after the incorporation of Corsica as a French dominion in 1768, and finally to the limited but welcome recent efforts by the government to promote some education in Corsican. In describing these developments, the book shows that the islanders themselves were often willing accomplices in abandoning their heritage language, because of the enhanced education and work prospects offered by a good knowledge of French. Chapter seven then presents the results of a series of surveys and interviews conducted among the islanders in 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2005, to find out about their ability in, and attitudes towards, Corsican. Finally, chapter eight ties together the 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 great authority, the islanders do not really come alive in this book until chapter seven,
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when we see the results of the surveys and also read substantial extracts from the interviews. And in fact, throughout the book there are a few additional things that might have been included to embellish the material and thereby enhance our understanding of the situation, and their absence is sometimes a bit puzzling. For example, it is a pity that there are no maps, to allow us to grasp where towns such as Ajaccio, Bastia and Corte are, and also to offer a clearer picture of the location of Corsica with respect to Italy and to the south of France. Furthermore, the account of shifts in government policy, and especially of recent efforts to support the Corsican language, focuses largely on education, and we learn little about other 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 details are 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, which seems a pity as that would enrich our understanding of the data somewhat, to allow us to appreciate more clearly how the language is genetically related to Italian rather than to French, and to enable us to comprehend in what ways the 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 are absent when so much of the material is presented so well, allowing us to gain a good understanding of the historical developments as well as the evolution of official government policy. Indeed, the account is always clear, authoritative and informative. In chapter seven, the tone of the book changes quite substantially when we are presented with the detailed results of the surveys and also extracts from interviews with a range of the islanders. The survey material complements the earlier historical account nicely, and the results that are given offer a fascinating quantitative snapshot of the current status of the language and attitudes towards it on the island. However, the presentation and interpretation of the statistics are occasionally a bit puzzling. For example, Table 7.1 (p. 107) shows the proportion of the respondents who claimed to understand Corsican in the five separate surveys, and then the figures for yes and for no from each survey are separately broken down into men and women. For instance, in the 1999 survey, 86 percent of the respondents claimed to understand Corsican, and it is reported that 53 percent of these were men and 47 percent were women, 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 gender preference for men to understand the language, the conclusion that is drawn is that it is fair to reason that there are no major differences between the genders concerning comprehension of Corsican (p. 108). One reason for this unexpected conclusion is the way the results are presented: it is not particularly important what percentage of the people who said yes were men and what proportion were women; instead, the key figure would seem to be what proportion of the
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Table 1: Percentage of people who claimed to understand Corsican in various surveys (data from Table 7.1 recalculated) Year 1999 2000 2003 2005 adults 2005 pupils Men 92% (23 out of 25) 96% (24 out of 25) 88% (22 out of 25) 92% (23 out of 25) 88% (14 out of 16) Women 80% (20 out of 25) 80% (20 out of 25) 76% (19 out of 25) 76% (19 out of 25) 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 men said yes while only 80 percent of the women said yes (so just 8% of the men said no while 20% of the women said no). In fact, we can recalculate the data for all five surveys, as in Table 1 above. When the data is re-analysed in this way, the difference between the genders becomes rather more apparent, as the percentage of men claiming to understand the language is larger in every single survey. 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, such as one or two maps, more details about the availability and readership of books and magazines, and some linguistic information about the Corsican language, this book presents a fascinating and authoritative historical account of the fluctuating status of Corsican over the years. Furthermore, there is plenty of valuable information from the surveys, even if in some cases the data might undergo a slightly different interpretation to the one that is given. Overall, not only does the book provide an interesting overview of the language situation in Corsica, but additionally it offers a valuable study of the consequences of government neglect, or at times even hostility, towards a heritage language, and also the limitations and problems associated with trying to support a threatened language through the education system.
DAVID DETERDING Universiti Brunei Darusslam Jalan Tungku Link Gadong, BE 1410 Brunei dhdeter@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-KOZOWSKA

The latest book by Sara Mills can be viewed as, on the one hand, an evaluation of earlier work on linguistic sexism and, on the other hand, as an attempt to
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establish a new research agenda for feminist linguistics. In brief, according to Mills, time has come to change the focus of investigation from studying easily-identifiable forms of overt sexism encoded in language, to less obvious and contextually-determined cases of indirect sexism. This shift is necessary since overt sexism has largely been reduced by language reform and politicalcorrectness campaigns, and what should be studied now is the beliefs or discourses about women and men which are represented in and mediated through language (p. 3). Moreover, the former issue, Mills argues, was of primary concern to Second Wave Feminism, whereas the latter is more in line with the assumptions and methods of Third Wave Feminism. Thus, the book under review here aims to develop a Third Wave feminist analysis of sexism which still retains some of the features and benefits of Second Wave feminist analysis (p. 34). In the authors view, time has also come to abandon a simplistic understanding of all the notions relevant to feminist linguistics, such as sexism (direct and indirect), political correctness, language reform, femininity, masculinity, etc. since they should be (re)interpreted within the specific cultural and linguistic context in which 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 is sufficient for those who want to know what the book is about but wish to skip the 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 its impact, each chapter dealing with overt sexism, language reform, and political correctness respectively, while Chapter 5 addresses the issue of indirect sexism and 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 language which discriminated against women by representing them negatively or which seemed to implicitly assume that activities primarily associated with women were necessarily trivial (p. 38). This view of sexism determined both subsequent research and concrete actions that were undertaken.
The aim of feminists therefore was to call attention to the way in which the use of certain language items seemed to systematically discriminate against and cause offence to women, by compiling lists of such language items and calling for people and 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 important in calling attention to overt sexist language (p. 38), on the other hand, she points out various problematic aspects of such studies. Thus, she observes that many examples of overt sexism have lost their validity and became archaic (as, for instance, the semantic difference between master and mistress), and many disappeared from use due to feminist campaigns (e.g. changes in the use of generic nouns and pronouns, dictionary definitions of gender-related terms,
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etc.). Secondly, and more importantly, Mills emphasizes that studying language items in isolation is a large oversimplification and argues for the need to examine the context in which a sexist expression is used. For instance, a sexist insult term when used by a close friend might acquire a positive value (e.g. dyke and queer in lesbians speech). For Mills, even gangsta rap lyrics which appear to promote violence and overt sexism, should not be understood literally, but in terms of the values of a specific culture. She concludes that it is essential that feminists continue to campaign about overt sexism as it has an impact on the way women construct their sense of their own identity and their positions within institutions and communities of practice (p. 76), but they should take into account the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs. In Chapter 3, Mills undertakes an evaluation of nonsexist language reforms that have taken place over the last 30 years and various responses to these campaigns (examined in more detail by Pauwels 1998). She discusses different strategies 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 encounters numerous problems, is generally positive as, in her view, many sexist forms have changed in recent years due to feminists efforts (p. 76). However, some that still persist should be pointed out and fought against. Nevertheless, reducing linguistic sexism should be approached with caution since it does not eliminate its real sources:
changing the language used about you may not change peoples views about you as a member of a group, because change of that nature takes place over a much longer stretch of time, and as a consequence of changes within the society as a whole. (p. 96)

Moreover, a somewhat paradoxical negative side-effect of such campaigns is that they have led not so much to the elimination of the problem, but to attempts to disguise 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 a type 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 the reformers. She argues that the term political correctness is usually associated with negative evaluation, restriction and exaggeration while its opposite, i.e. political incorrectness is valued positively, though both have been used in a
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range of diverse ways. According to Mills, the development of the term political correctness with its negative connotations has undoubtedly made the process of linguistic reform [. . .] much more complicated and problematic (p. 108). She proceeds to provide a lengthy discussion of the origin, development and various meanings and associations of these notions, focusing on their use in the British media. Mills claims that anti-sexist campaigns are often confused with political correctness, which is detrimental to the efforts of the reformers who are now forced to challenge these new developments. Chapter 5 is based on the authors conviction that recently overt sexism has been driven underground and other more subtle forms of expression which are equally pernicious and discriminatory have been used instead (p. 21). These new forms constitute indirect sexism, whose analysis should now be given priority in feminist linguistics. Thus, the claim that sexism resides in certain words or phrases which can be objectively exposed by feminist linguistics (p. 3) is a large oversimplification since it is, in fact, the belief systems which are articulated which are sexist (p. 3). Consequently, what should be analysed are not only or primarily cases of overt sexism, encoded in language, but rather instances of indirect sexism that manifests itself at the level of discourses and patterns in language use (p. 154). An example of this phenomenon is provided by the following sentence: Women tennis players get lower prize money at Wimbledon because the game is less exciting, which contains no overtly sexist words, but is clearly sexist in its contents. Other cases involve newspaper articles in which female politicians are frequently described in terms of their appearance and family roles (irrelevant for their functions) while male politicians in terms of what they do and say. Mills identifies several types of indirect sexism which can be found in jokes, presuppositions (e.g. as in the phrase so, have you women finished gossiping?), scripts and metaphors, collocations (e.g. frustrated spinster), conflicting messages and an androcentric perspective (e.g. in reports of rape). Mills stresses, however, that indirect sexism is difficult to investigate since it is not always possible to agree on what is sexist, in that sexism is an evaluation of an intent to be sexist rather than an inherent quality of the utterance or text alone. There will therefore be disagreement about what constitutes sexism (p. 136). In other words, as often sexism is a hypothesized position which we attribute to others (p. 136), differences of opinion and interpretation of specific utterances are likely to occur. Furthermore, Mills claims that studies of overt and indirect sexism can be reconciled by combining Second and Third Wave feminist analyses as each is suited to particular types of sexism. (p. 136). Thus, the Second Wave approach, with its emphasis on generalizations, can adequately examine forms of overt sexism embedded in the language system, whereas Third Wave feminism, with its focus on specific texts and interactions, is better able to analyze indirect sexism (within particular contexts). Consequently, she sees her approach as both localized and generalized.
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While reading Language and Sexism I found myself agreeing with many of the authors views, particularly with her claim that sexism is a very complex, unstable phenomenon (p. 154), and that it should be studied in all its complexity and taking into account its various contextual determinants. I also fully agree that it is important to avoid a simplistic understanding of other key notions pertinent to the study of linguistic sexism. The chapter which I consider to be particularly valuable is the one on political correctness and its intricate relationship with anti-sexist campaigns. My major reservation about the book is that it brings relatively little new material. The simplistic approach to linguistic sexism criticized by Mills seems to have long been abandoned by the majority of researchers who are generally well-aware of the need to go beyond the purely systemic approach and adopt a pragmatic perspective. Thus, in current practice, investigations of linguistic sexism usually take into account contextual aspects. For instance, Weatherall (2002: 6) states that, if the significance of words depends, at least in part, on their position within broader systems of meaning, then sexism in language is more than a matter of just words. Moreover, many other researchers reject the narrow 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 are represented in language. Sexism in language can be considered more broadly as forms of language use that function to control women, and discourses that perpetuate social beliefs about women (p. 31). Yule (2008: 15) expresses a similar view:
but sexist language is not only located in the content or meaning of specific words or phrases. It can also be found in dialogue, in our conversations and in the meanings and communication created by our speech styles or patterns.

It should also be mentioned that many types of indirect sexism discussed by Mills have long been researched although not under this heading. For example, more than 30 years ago Key (1975) observed that in newspapers and magazines women were more often discussed in terms of their appearance and family relationships, whereas men were more often discussed in terms of what they did. The present reviewer is also somewhat disappointed with the stated focal point of the book, namely indirect sexism and its analysis. In the 178-page volume fewer than 30 pages (Chapter 5) are devoted to this issue with surprisingly little actual data presentation and examination. What is more, after reading this chapter, it is still not clear to me how indirect sexism could be analysed objectively as, according to Mills, what is sexist can only be evaluated locally, in a specific context, the most important part of which is intent to be sexist. It is doubtful whether information of this kind can be easily accessed by the researcher, particularly in the case of written texts. In fact, Mills herself is aware of these problems and states that, there are difficulties in interpreting utterances and texts as unequivocally sexist
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(p. 152), and all that we can rely on is the hearers or readers interpretation which is based on working out intentionality (p. 154). Thus, what promised to be the novel and therefore the most interesting part of the book, has turned out to be, in fact, programmatic in character and leaving the potential researcher with many doubts as to how various analytic difficulties should be resolved if the scholarly requirement of objectivity were to be preserved. It should also be pointed out that Language and Sexism, in spite of its very general 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 even British perspective. Thus, the majority of Mills observations and comments, her discussion of language reform and political correctness in particular, are limited mostly to English (with only a few references to work on other languages to be found in footnotes), and do not pertain to the situation in many other languages and societies in which there is even no common awareness of the problem and where the very existence of linguistic sexism is either not recognised or fiercely denied (e.g., see Karwatowska and Szpyra-Kozowska 2005 on linguistic sexism in Polish). This means that many general claims made in the book under review such as the study of sexism sometimes feels outdated and archaic (p. 9), sexism appears to be something which the general public are concerned about (p. 154), or feminism has achieved its goals of equal opportunities and discouraging discrimination (p. 19) will come as a total surprise to those readers who happen to live outside English-speaking and West European countries. The above critical comments are not meant to discredit the book, which I find very useful as a discussion and evaluation of the past and present work on linguistic sexism in English, anti-sexist reform and its public reception. It is probably the authors name on the book cover that had raised this readers expectations.

REFERENCES
Karwatowska, Magorzata and Jolanta Szpyra-Kozowska. 2005. Lingwistyka pci: Ona i on w jzyku polskim. Lublin, Poland: Wydawnictwo UMCS. e Key, Mary Ritchie. 1975. Male/Female Language. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press. Pauwels, Anne. 1998. Women Changing Language. London: Longman. Weatherall, Ann. 2002. Gender, Language and Discourse. London: Routledge.
JOLANTA SZPYRA-KOZOWSKA Institute of English Maria Curie-Skodowska University Pl. M. C. Skodowskiej 5 20-031 Lublin Poland j.szpyrakozlowska@chello.pl

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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, though not 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 the standard approach to discourse analysis as language-in-use. Lorenzo-Dus is just as interested in the visual language of television, and here her analysis is informed by media studies. Her transcripts have a dual focus, describing the image track alongside the spoken discourse. At times too, Lorenzo-Dus looks at body language, particularly in an extended analysis of hand gesturing in the U.S. Presidential campaign debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry. All this gives the book a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary feel which goes beyond some of the more strictly focused previous work in this area. Nevertheless, Television Discourse is clearly rooted in what is now an established field of interest in the analysis of broadcast talk. In particular, the introduction highlights two main influences. The first is the work that has developed, mainly in Britain, since the publication of Paddy Scannells edited book, Broadcast Talk, in 1991. This has developed his concept of the double articulation of broadcast talk, being addressed from a studio, to its dispersed overhearing audience. It includes the work of Ian Hutchby, Martin Montgomery, Joanna Thornborrow and Andrew Tolson, all of which is extensively referenced here. The second major influence is Erving Goffman. In fact it would be fair to say that when it focuses on the spoken discourse, much of the analysis here is Goffmanesque: concerned with participation frameworks, shifts of footing, facework and (im)politeness. The methodology then, is dominated by interactional sociolinguistics; and it is difficult to detect much influence from say, Gricean pragmatics, or Conversation Analysis, to name two other major approaches in this field. The books idiosyncrasies are most apparent in its organisation. Whereas previous work has either surveyed a range of genres, or focused on one (talk shows, broadcast news) Television Discourse is organised around what LorenzoDus calls features which recur in the reference corpus and are representative of wider tendencies (p. 9). These features are storytelling, closeness, conflict and persuasion, in that order. While the first and the last of these features are clearly rooted in the venerable scholarly traditions of narratology and rhetoric, the other two are derived from the more recent work on broadcast talk. Closeness is Lorenzo-Dus take on sociability; conflict relates to the work on confrontation talk pioneered by Hutchby and applied to the analysis of spectacular confrontations in some forms of talk show. However, I found it difficult to understand the order in which these features are presented in the
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book. It may be sensible to start with storytelling as the most ancient human discourse practice, but it is not clear why persuasion (rhetoric) is positioned last, and after the section of conflict which is, arguably, the most significant representative of a wider tendency. Within each feature, the strategy is to bring together generic developments that might otherwise seem disparate. So storytelling covers documentary and oral narratives in talk shows. Closeness links the conversationalisation of news with celebrity chat and confession. Conflict looks at confrontations in talk shows and adversarial news interviews, highlighting what Lorenzo-Dus characterises as the growth of confrontainment. Persuasion brings together the aforementioned analysis of body language in presidential debate and the talk of presenters in lifestyle programmes. Lorenzo-Dus argues that these two forms of persuasion are linked through the concept of symbolic goods, but I have to say 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 found in the section on conflict. Here Lorenzo-Dus traces an apparent cross-over from spectacular conflict in talk shows, to confrontations in some varieties of news interviewing. The examples she gives of the latter are an edition of Question Time in 2005, where Tony Blair is being challenged by members of the studio audience over the war in Iraq; and a highly confrontational Channel 4 news interview between Jon Snow and Alastair Campbell, concerning the dodgy dossier on weapons of mass destruction. I found myself wondering how representative these examples were, and indeed whether the Question Time extract could be properly called a news interview. However, what they do seem to show is an infiltration of talk-show talk into some varieties of political talk on television. Lorenzo-Dus develops Robin Lakoffs (2003) discussion of public incivility when she 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, of styles of television presentation. Lorenzo-Dus includes examples of the ways talk show hosts co-narrate the life stories of their guests, and the now familiar cross-talk between news anchors and correspondents in live two-ways. A more original analysis, drawing again on Goffman, is of the practice of presenter ventriloquism in documentaries: shifts of footing where presenters enter into the story worlds they are presenting. (An amusing example of this has David Attenborough animating the reactions of a female bird of paradise during a courtship display.) Perhaps the earlier focus on double articulation in broadcast talk, with its primary emphasis on studio interactions, had the effect of turning attention 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 theoretical moves are made, for instance from disclosures in chat shows to Foucaults account of confession (but is celebrity chat, with its carefully modulated public performance of selected private disclosures, really all that confessional?); and
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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 be very derivative of previous media studies work on this genre, for example the focus on the reveal as the climax of narratives of transformation. Perhaps this is 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 an overview of televisions focus on emotion, morality and reality, but these are presented as themes which run through this diverse corpus of materials, rather than an argument about the communicative challenges faced by contemporary television. At its most illuminating, analysis of media discourse from the perspective of broadcast talk has produced two significant achievements. Firstly, studies with their roots mainly in Conversation Analysis have shown how features of ordinary conversation are, in this institutional context, systematically transformed. Second, there has been some work that has made an important contribution to our understanding of how broadcasting works, as a species of mediated communication. Here, preconceptions and prejudices have been challenged, most notably the hermeneutics of suspicion applied to media discourse by some critical approaches, as Lorenzo-Dus herself acknowledges. However by comparison with this previous work, Television Discourse is both less systematic and less radical. It offers a series of illustrative observations rather than a fresh perspective on communicative features of television. For those of us working in this field, Television Discourse, in the end, poses the question where next? It is basically a bringing together, under general headings, of a diversity of previous work, illustrated with fresh examples. Its comprehensiveness is well illustrated by the range of its references and the very full bibliography provided, which is virtually a compendium of relevant research both in discourse analysis and in media studies. However, confrontation talk, chat, conversationalisation, sociability in the eighteen years since the publication of Broadcast Talk have now become familiar concepts. There remains some unexplored territory, for instance why has no-one examined the discourse of childrens TV, where very basic communicative strategies can be found? It is equally surprising that there is not more work on the gendering of television discourse, following the early identification of womens issues in talk shows. But perhaps its also time now to move beyond the familiar conventions of terrestrial TV to explore the new television of continuous updates, interactive services 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.
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Lakoff, Robin T. 2003. The new incivility: Threat or promise? In Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis (eds.) New Media Language. London: Routledge. 3644.
ANDREW TOLSON De Montfort University Leicester, U.K. avtolson@dmu.ac.uk

TEUN A. VAN DIJK. Discourse and Power. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan 2008. 308 pp. Pb (9780230574090) 18.99.
Reviewed by LIU LIHUA

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an academic movement in social sciences and linguistics which focuses on inequality in society and the ways in which discourse is used to realize power and ideology. With its roots in Hallidays SystemicFunctional Linguistics, Critical Linguistics, and broader critical research linked to such scholars as Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Jurgen Harbemas, Antonio Gramsci, and others, CDA has become an umbrella term for a wide range of politically involved studies of discourse, with Tuen van Dijk as one of its main advocates and practitioners. In this book consisting of van Dijks seminal papers and previously published articles the author prefers to use the term Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to CDA. CDS is dissociated from any specific methodology, allowing researchers to adopt any discourse analytic methods that suit their particular aims. CDS is multidisciplinary in nature and combines three key dimensions: discourse, cognition and society, combining with the historical and cultural factors shaping social reality. An important part of van Dijks work centres on the formulation of a theory of context, going beyond an autonomous analysis of text and talk. Thus, context is defined as mental models which not only include the usual categories of social situations, but also feature the cognitive aspects of the situation. Context is then realized as the mentally represented structure of those properties of the social situation that are relevant for the production of comprehension of discourse. Specifically, context consists of such categories as the overall definitions of the situation, setting, ongoing actions, participants in various communicative, social or institutional roles, as well as their mental representations: goals, knowledge, opinions, attitudes and ideologies. Van Dijks model of context controls the way the speaker draws the utterance to the communicative environment; the relationship of discourse and context is not deterministic, rather, discourse and society are mediated through social representations in the participants mental models/contexts in which knowledge, attitude, and ideology are included. The social representation is expressed in discourse via the mental models of individual participants. 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 associated forms of domination, such as racism; these themes dominate the book. Key terms
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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. language use, 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 of discourse. Power is then realized through the controlling of context as well as the content of discourse and its structures, such as topic, genre, headlines, discourse strategies, etc. Chapters 5 and 6 make explicit links between discourse and racism, especially in relation to van Dijks well-known ideas on elite racism, the denial of racism, strategies of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, and so on. In constructing the Other, topics, stories and argumentation may thus be used to represent minorities or immigrants as a problem or a threat to our 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 empirical studies on several aspects of discourse/power nexus. Chapter 7 outlines a sociocognitive approach needed to account for the interface between the social and individual properties of texts, or, put differently, between political discourse and political cognition. In Chapter 8, van Dijk analyses the rhetoric of the former Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, in his 2003 parliamentary speech in support of the U.S. military invasion of Iraq. Chapter 9 takes a multidisciplinary approach to an account of discursive manipulation, i.e. a form of power abuse or domination, which, according to van Dijk, is realized discursively as polarized structures of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation expressing ideological conflict. Manipulation involves enhancing the power, moral superiority and credibility of the speaker and discrediting the Other. Finally, continuing the analysis of Aznars 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 Dijks earlier, well-known work in CDS, and in continuing to promote the interdisciplinary approach to analyzing data. It will be useful to anyone wishing to engage with the study of discourse and power, or needing a refresher course on van Dijks contribution to the field.
LIU LIHUA Beijing Foreign Studies University School of English and International Studies No. 2, North West 3rd Ring Road Haidian Distirct Beijing, China 100089 llihua08@yahoo.com.cn

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