Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Susan Ehrlich, Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent
Deborah Cameron, Working with Spoken Discourse
Stefan Titscher, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak and Eva Vetter, Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis
Linda A. Wood and Rolf O. Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text
Srikant Sarangi and Celia Roberts (eds.), Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings
Ulrich Ammon (ed.), The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities
Alexandra Jaffe, Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica
Niloofar Haeri, The Sociolinguistic Market of Cairo: Gender, Class and Education
Anita Y. K. Poon, Medium of Instruction in Hong Kong: Policy and Practice
Tariq Rahman, Language, Education and Culture
Dariusz Galasinski, The Language of Deception: A Discourse Analytical Study
Clifford Hill and Eric Larsen, Children and Reading Tests
Fern L. Johnson, Speaking Culturally: Language Diversity in the United States
Lucy Burke, Tony Crowley and Alan Girvin (eds.), The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Thomas A. Sebeok, Global Semiotics
Ceil Lucas (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages
Alison Wray, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon
Chris Barker and Dariusz Galasinski, Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis. A Dialogue on Language and Identity
Stanton Wortham, Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis
Carmen Silva–Corvalán, Sociolingüística y pragmática del español
M. Teresa Turell (ed.), Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects of Linguistic Minority Groups
Dennis Ager, Motivation in Language Planning and Language Policy.
Aled Jones and Bill Jones, Welsh Reflections: Y Drych and America 1851–2001
Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Marianna Spanaki (eds.), A Reader in Greek Sociolinguistics—Studies in Modern Greek Language, Culture and Communication     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: MOSER, S., N. MAHER, A. KALAN and J. CONNELL, Migration and Identity in Sydney: Icelanders, Minangkabau and White Russians O'SULLIVAN, P., (Ed.), The Irish World Wide: History, Identity. Volume One: Patterns of Emigration AGER, D, G. MUSKENS and S. WRIGHT (Eds), Language Education for Intercultural Communication ATA, Abe (I) Wade (Ed.), Religion and Ethnic Identity: An Australian Study     

Accommodation or rejection? Teenagers’ experiences of tensions between traditional and new speakers of Irish

This article analyses narratives presented by teenage Irish‐speakers about encounters between new speakers of Irish and locals in Gaeltacht (traditionally Irish‐speaking) areas. It demonstrates how two conflicting ideologies of legitimate language promoted by the state in the establishment and maintenance of Irish as ‘the national language’ alienate young new speakers of Irish and young Gaeltacht‐based Irish‐speakers from each other and from the language by construing the Gaeltacht as a resource for the nation, generating unrealistic expectations from new speakers and corresponding resentment from their Gaeltacht peers. The analysis of this case contributes to wider debates about the impact of language revitalisation policies on young people, and explores the tension that may arise between the aim of increasing the number of a language's speakers and the desire to retain its traditional functions in the communities where it has been best maintained.     

Creating places through language rules: A historical and ethnographic perspective on the “Rule of Irish”

In seeking to understand the political projects underlying pedagogical choices, this article studies the reasons for and situated dynamics of the implementation of the “Rule of Irish” (or Riail na Gaeilge), which prohibits the use of English in Irish immersion language camps (“summer colleges”) set in Ireland's officially designated Irish‐speaking regions, the Gaeltacht. Despite the great difficulty imposing this rule on learners represents, its implantation has remained unquestioned since the development of the first summer colleges at the beginning of the 20th century. Combining ethnographic observations, the study of press articles published between 1901 and 1916, and the analysis of contemporary language policies, I show that the implementation of Riail na Gaeilge aims to provide students with an experience of the monolingual Irish place that the Gaeltacht has long been popularly and officially imagined as being. Riail na Gaeilge is thus not just a pedagogical tool but it also has a social function of consecrating the Gaeltacht as Irish‐speaking Ireland. The article traces how the Gaeltacht was created and has been maintained through Riail na Gaeilge and explores the political reasons underlying this institutionalization.     

Literacy in the modern world

Books reviewed in this article:
Clark, R. and Ivanic, R. The Politics of Writing
Hasan, Ruqaiya and Williams, Geoff (eds.). Literacy in Society (Applied Linguistics and Language Study)
Johns, Ann M. Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies (Cambridge Applied Linguistics)
Lankshear, Colin with Gee, James Paul; Knobel, Michele and Searle, Chris. Changing Literacies
Andre´e, Tabouret-Keller; Le Page, Robert B.; Gardner-Chloros, Penelope and Varro, Gabrielle (eds.). Vernacular Literacy: A Re-evaluation (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed
Wolfram, Walt and Schilling-Estes, Natalie. American English
Yamada, Haru. Different Games, Different Rules: Why Americans and Japanese Misunderstand Each Other .
Singh, Rajendra. Lectures against Sociolinguistics .
Harvey, Keith and Shalom, Celia (eds.). Language and Desire: Encoding Sex, Romance and Intimacy .     

Linguists and other animals

Book reviewed in this article:
Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation     

Slave Ships and Coffin Ships: Transatlantic Exchanges in Irish-American Blackface Minstrelsy

Abstract

Irish participation in blackface minstrelsy underwent complex transatlantic exchanges as it jumped from the US to Ireland and back again from the era of the Great Famine through the end of the nineteenth century. Most research on Irish-American blackface minstrelsy treats the Irish in America as a homogenous group that used ‘blacking up’ to establish its ethnic whiteness. However, there were at least two distinct groups of Irish Americans who participated in blackface minstrelsy: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. The latter’s incorporation into the history of minstrelsy means that we must reconsider assumptions about how and why the Irish performed blackface in both Ireland and America. Because Irish Protestants’ whiteness was never in question, theories of ethnic assimilation and working class anxieties do not adequately account for Irish gravitation to minstrel shows. Something else about Irish identity captivated performers and audiences. Moving beyond the racial assimilation mode, I argue that blacking up carried tensions of land dispossession, national identity, and ethnic conflict in Ireland into American culture.     

Orderly mixing and accommodation in South African codeswitching

'Mixed Language,' a characteristic pattern of language use among African township residents in South Africa, may well include words or full constituents from several languages. However, from both a structural and a social perspective, such speech has a systematic nature. In reference to grammatical structure, within any CP (projection of COMP) showing codeswitching, only one language (the Matrix Language) provides the grammatical frame in the data studied. Also, while speakers from different educational levels engage in codeswitching with similar frequencies, the types of codeswitched constitutents they prefer are different. In reference to the social use of language, we argue that specific patterns of codeswitching indicate how language is both an index of identity and a tool of communication in South Africa. In the codeswitching patterns they use, speakers exhibit strong loyalty to their own first languages. Yet, because they recognize that codeswitching facilitates communication with members of other ethnic groups, they use a number of codeswitching strategies as a means of accommodating to their addressees and simultaneously as a means of projecting multiple identities for themselves.     

Resurgent Irish immigration to the U.S. in the 1980s and early 1990s: a socio-demographic profile

Irish immigration to the US has been motivated traditionally by a lack of employment opportunities at home. With the passage of the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, however, Irish immigrants were no longer explicitly favoured. Family reunification became the primary path of entry, which worked against the Irish who had lost their immediate generational link with US residents.
During the severe Irish recession of 1980–85 a resurgence in Irish outflows resulted in a large undocumented Irish population in the US. Most of this population was later legalized as a result of special legislation that targeted the Irish. There have been concerns in Ireland that the outflow in the 1980s, unlike prior flows, included a high proportion of skilled persons, leading some to characterize the outflow as a "new wave".
This article uses US immigration data to assess how the occupational characteristics of recent Irish immigrants compare with prior immigrant cohorts and also examines how Irish immigrants are incorporated into the US economy.
Recent Irish immigrants to the US spanned the occupational spectrum: accountants, engineers, nurses and other professionals found a booming job market in the most advanced sectors of the US economy, while less skilled immigrants found jobs in the informal economy. While the number of entering Irish professionals increased, flows of the less skilled increased even more dramatically, resulting in an overall decline in the occupational selectivity of Irish immigrants.
The 1980–85 Irish recession has been followed by robust growth for more than a decade. Ireland is now experiencing a net inflow of persons, including many Irish professionals returning from the US. However, Ireland continues to experience a net outflow of the young and less skilled which may once again result in a large undocumented Irish presence in the US.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Kay McCormick. Language in Cape Town's District Six
Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Balland Arthur K. Spears(eds.). Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas
Glyn Williamsand Delyth Morris. Language Planning and Language Use: Welsh in a Global Age
Pierre Larrivée(ed.). Linguistic Conflict and Language Laws: Understanding Language Laws
Dennis Ager. Ideology and Image: Britain and Language
Iingrid Piller. Bilingual Couples Talk: The Discursive Construction of Hybridity
Rob Penhallurick. Studying the English Language
Eleanor Dickey. Latin Forms of Address From Plautus to Apuleius
Viveka Velupillai. Hawai'i Creole English: A Typological Analysis of the Tense–Mood–Aspect System
Anna Duszak(ed.). Us and Others
Kenneth Cragg. Faiths in Their Pronouns: Websites of Identity     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Global Human Smugling: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by David Kyle and Rey Koslowski Minority Nationalism and the Changing International Order. Edited by Michael Keating and John McGarry The Making ofhian America through Political Participation. By Pei‐te Lien Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. By Hasia R. Diner The Irish in the South, 1815–1877. By David T. Gleeson Nau York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950–1970. By Eli Lederhendler Immigration Law in the European Community. By Elspeth Guild From Immigrants to Ethnic Minority: Making Black Community in Britain. By Lorna Chessum German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging. Edited by Stefan Wolff Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees From Nazi Germany. By Walter Laqueur Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil, 1870–1871. By Betrand Taithe Portugal‐Brasil: Migraçóes e Migrantes, 1850–1930. By Maria Beatriz Rocha‐Trindade and Domingos Caeiro Nationalism and Democratic Transition: The Politics of Citizenship and Language in Post‐Soviet Latvia. By Mark A. Jubulis Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria. By Rotimi T. Suberu The Impact of Immigration on Australia. By I. H. Burnley Visits Home: Migration Experiences between Italy and Australia. By Loretta Baldassar Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan. By Hiroshi Komai China and Southeast Asia's; Ethnic Chinese: State and Diaspora in Contemporary Asia. By Paul J. Bolt The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy. By Wang Gungwu     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed
Jones, Mari C. Language Obsolescence and Revitalization. Linguistic Change in Two Sociolinguistically Contrasting Welsh Communities .
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue; Shanker, Stuart and Taylor, Talbot. Apes, Language and the Human Mind .
Kurzon, Dennis. 1998. Discourse of Silence .
Blommaert, Jan and Verschueren, Jef. Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance .
Robertshaw, Paul. Summary Justice: Judges Address Juries .
Broderick, George. Language Death in the Isle of Man: An Investigation into the Decline and Extinction of Manx Gaelic as a Community Language in the Isle of Man .
Jenkins, Geraint H. (ed.). Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History of the Welsh Language .
Czyz˙ewski, Marek; Kowalski, Sergiusz and Piotrowski, Andrzej (eds.). Rytualny chaos: Studium dyskursu publicznego .
Suleiman, Yasir (ed.). Language and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa .     

论文学语言在大学英语教学中的意义

本文主要论述了英美文学与大学英语教学相结合的重要性,以及文学语言的渗透在教学中的实际意义。笔者认为采用英美文学与大学英语教学相结合的教学模式是我国英语教育改革的一项重要尝试,有助于提高学生的语言能力以及拓展综合素质,并在文中举例分析论证了这种教学模式的可行性。     

English in contemporary Sweden: Perceptions,policies, and narrated practices

This paper compares trends in Sweden's language planning and language policies, and particularly the rationale underlying recent government legislation, to actual language use at the ‘grass roots’ of society, in order to investigate the extent to which academic and official rationales are confirmed by observed language practices. The passing of the Swedish Language Act of 2009 followed debates in academia and the media which not infrequently characterised English as a major threat to the survival of Swedish. However, despite the strong belief in the utility of English widely held in Sweden, the Swedish language is the preferred language of Swedes as well as immigrants in most domains. These results reveal a contradiction between the arguments put forward by a number of academics, educators and journalists concerning the ‘threat’ of English, and the language practices of ordinary folk in their daily lives.     

Scalar politics,language ideologies,and the sociolinguistics of globalization among transnational Korean professionals in Hong Kong

This paper argues that the sociolinguistics of globalization is accompanied by a constitutive scalar politics. Based on ten interviews with Korean professionals in Hong Kong, we report that Korean migrants’ use and experience of English is characterized by competing language ideologies we identify as: Pragmatic English/Perfect English, Multilingualism/English Only, and Global Language/Local Language. Tensions within these ideologies were revealed as respondents referenced the contexts of their daily lives as intersecting sets of geographic, temporal, and social scales. We discuss how sociolinguistic relations associated with the transnational lifecourse, hybridizing identity, and racialization were imagined in ways that re‐negotiated these scales to serve the interests of the participants and provide coherence to their communicative practices. Sociolinguistic relations both reference scales and constitute them. We conclude that attending to scales and scalar politics provides a better explanatory framework for the ways the uneven linguistics markets of globalization are negotiated by transnational subjects.     

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
RICHARD J. OSSENBERG (ed.), Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Conflict
JACQUES LAZURE, Lasociété des jeunes québecois
J.L. GRANATSTEIN, Marlborough Marathon: One Street against a Developer
HECTOR MASSEY and CHARLES GODFREY, People or Planes
JOHN SEWELL, Up against City Hall
LORNA R. MARSDEN, Population Probe: Canada
ANTHONY WILDEN (trans.), The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis . By Jacques Lacan, translated with notes and commentary
E. BÄR, « The Language of the Unconscious according to Jacques Lacan >> in Semiotica
A. LAVERS, « Some Aspects of Language in the Work of Jacques Lacan >> in Semiotica
H.C. SHANDS, « Compte rendu: A. Wilden, The Language of the Self >> in Semiotica
GARNET MCDIARMID and DAVID PRATT, Teaching Prejudice     

'Women of the Wild Geese': Irish Women, Exile and Identity in Spain, 1750-1775

This study focuses upon the experiences of first and second generation Irish female migrants in Spain during the mid-eighteenth century. Recent scholarship has sought to place Irish migrants in Europe within a broad context of assimilation. The experience of Irish communities in Spain appears to have been particularly positive, with the Irish as a group being awarded equal citizenship at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, the gendered experience of Irish assimilation into Spanish society has received limited scholarly attention. This essay analyses the experiences of two groups of Irish women living in Spain: women who lived in religious communities and the female members of one of the most elite families to have migrated from Ireland. The lives of the daughters of Ignatius White reveal the ways in which Irish women worked their way into spheres of power and influence, including the Spanish court. The networks and activities of these women show a crystallisation of the ambitions of many Irish from the first and second generation to be born in Spain. The relationship between these women, their kinship groups and their networks of power and influence offers a positive and successful example of Irish female migrant experience.