Was heisst hier "fremd"?: Studien zu Sprache und Fremdheit (review)

The editors of this book have brought together thirteen papers on various aspects of language and das Fremde ‘the other’. These papers were delivered at an interdisciplinary conference at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in July 1996. Written from diverse perspectives, these papers are arranged under specific sections, and a short but well-written introduction (7–10) tries to unify the ideas under the concept of the other. The topics fall into five categories.

1. 1. Language and otherness: Brigitte Jostes (11–76) analyzes the word fremd, its grammatical restrictions and different dimensions of meaning in German as well as its equivalents in Latin, Greek, French, and English. Bernd Ladwig (77–92) discusses the other using ordinary language philosophy, and Jürgen Trabant (93–114) points out the importance of consciously engaging the other in language and not trying to ignore it with a reductionist universalism.

2. 2. Language and nation: The three essays organized under this heading discuss the relation between language and the other in different historical periods and regions of Europe. HerfriedMünkler (115–35) investigates the role of language in the development of a national conscience in late medieval and early modern Europe. Kathrin Mayer (137–49) discusses the questione della lingua of sixteenth century Italy; however, the concept of the other is not truly the focus of this contribution. Bodo Guthmüller (151–62) discusses translations in Renaissance Italy and reasons for favoring different ways of dealing with the other at different times in Italy’s history.

3. 3. Otherness and German: Robert Charlier (163–80) investigates the language of foreigners in German eighteenth century epistolary novels. Horst Stenger (181–95) and Horst Dieter Schlosser (197–206) discuss the language situation in Eastern and Western Germany since reunification. They assume the existence of different communicative styles that are based in different socializations. Their aim is to develop and discuss a typology of different kinds of cultural otherness in Eastern and Western Germany.

4. 4. French in Africa: János Riesz (207–28) investigates the topos of le français sans danger, identifying and discussing three arguments used against the introduction of the French language in France’s former colonies. Dirk Naguschewski (229–42) discusses the attitudes towards French in Cameroon.

5. 5. Japanese Occidentalism: Irmela Hijiya Kirschnereit (243–51) considers the problems associated with the concept of Occidentalism, and Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo (253–65) closes the collection with a well-written essay on Kazutoshi Ueda and modern Japanese linguistics, in which she points out the assets of the adaptation of linguistic knowledge foreign to Japanese linguistics but also the problems it has created.

This is a useful book, but it cannot quite keep its promise of interdisciplinarity when it comes to individual essays. Although this book makes available generally high-quality work on diverse aspects of language and the other, not all essays make this connection explicit. What is also missing is current sociolinguistic theory. Some articles on language in society (in particular those which fail to discuss the concept of the other) could have benefited from the incorporation of current variationist theories, such as standard language ideology or network theory. However, for those seeking a broad view of the concept of the other and its different applications to linguistic issues, these papers cover an interesting range of topics and perspectives.