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  • Language and social identity ed. by Richard K. Blot
  • Liwei Gao
Language and social identity. Ed. by Richard K. Blot. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Pp. xx, 295. ISBN 0897897838. $83.95 (Hb).

This book consists of papers concerned with the relationships between the social use of language and the positioning of language users within a specific social stratum by other people. Articles in this collection also address the issue that particular uses of language are usually viewed as an indicator of language users’ geographic, ethnic, age, and gender attributes. The chapters in this volume mainly address two questions: (1) Under what circumstances is it necessary or desirable to resort to the use of a particular variety of language to construct a particular identity? and (2) What are the consequences of the building of various types of identities?

Following an introductory chapter by Richard Blot, three essays examine the role of narratives in constructing contrastive identities by Indians in the Americas. Gary Gossen looks at the situation in Chiapas, Mexico. He discusses a Tzotzil Maya story and suggests that narratives provide the Indian community with resources for treating linguistic performance as a foundation of social identities and social inequality. Janet Chernela and Eric Leed discuss the Unurato myth narratives in the Brazilian Northwest Amazon and explore how a collective identity is generated and preserved through narratives. Jerry Kelly studies the circulation of visionary Mayan narratives in southern Belize and shows that even when narratives are used for the purpose of reconstructing traditional identities to fight against modern oppression, the latter may still exert a strong influence in this rebuilding process. [End Page 454]

The next three articles highlight the important role that language plays in ideologies and practices of inclusion and exclusion and point to the shifting relations between language, identity, and political-economic development. Kathryn Woolard discusses the transformation of Catalan from the language of a suppressed minority to the official language of an economically and politically powerful Catalonia in Barcelona. Maria Lagos looks at the way in which individuals in Cochabamba, Bolivia, reproduce and transform the dominant discourse in a society where markers of class and ethnic differences have become ambiguous. Maria Villalon analyzes an Enapa text from Venezuela and argues that narratives constitute a major part of Enapa politics of self-representation, which help build different representations of personhood against the homogenizing procedures of the criollo society.

The remaining studies focus on the United States. Michael Long argues that the Ebonics debate was actually started mostly by the appearance of the New Right and its goal of weakening challenges to racial oppression. Bonnie Urciuoli examines the phenomenon that Spanish is used sparingly in the advertising in the magazine Hispanic and argues that this is a strategy for avoiding clashes with the rise of the Official English movement. Ellen Schnepel discusses language and gender in the French Caribbean and suggests that language planners, among others, have not paid sufficient attention to the way in which changing gender relations help shape the relationship between Creole and French in Guadeloupe and Martinique. James Collins looks at new strategies for mobilizing American Indian identities against historical and contemporary pressures to eliminate Tolowa identities in California. In examining the interaction among language, social identity, and the worldview, John Pulis calls attention to the importance of verbal performance in building Rastafarian identities in Jamaica. In scrutinizing passionate speech and literate talk in Grenada, George Mentore contends that the literacy practices that seem to be instrumental to political participation are actually imperialist tools for suppression that aim to produce acquiescent citizens.

Liwei Gao
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
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