Rethinking linguistic relativity ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson (review)

638LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) and their linguistically relevant surroundings is an 'assemblage' (86), and an assemblage is 'represented in theory by a construct called a linkage . . . that includes just those properties that are required to account for the communicative behavior associated with the assemblage' (126). Properties of communicating individuals in groups are known as linkage properties, which are defined as 'properties of the system as a whole' (177). Much of Ch. 14 is concerned with delimiting and characterizing linkages. Notions of boundaries and couplings are important to die characterization of linkages and their constituents. Equally important are constructs such as channel, prop, and setting (128-29). One example of how these constructs can be used is writing, which is characterized as 'involving linkages directly coupled through contact in a physical object' (228). Ch. 18 further extends Y's theory 'to develop an adequate human linguistic understanding of communities' (231). Interestingly, it is near the end of this chapter that Y describes 'the place of linguistics among the sciences'. It is also here that Y lays out the usual scientific views on the reducibility of theories and shows how 'human linguistics', Y's preferred term for what he thinks linguistics should be, can aid in relating the sciences that deal with human beings to one another. In Chs. 19 and 20, Y moves human linguistics to a higher level of abstraction. Ch. 21, though less formalized than Chs. 19-20, explicates notions like context and reference in some detail. Finally, Ch. 22 attempts to tie together material from several domains. On the place of intuitions in the science of linguistics, Y concludes that 'it is not clear that accounting for the intuitions ofa native speaker, ideal or otherwise, about his language is a very important part ofunderstanding how people communicate' (306). Evaluating a book that seeks to overturn the very foundations of linguistics is not easy. Readers who do not feel that linguistics is fundamentally on the wrong track are not apt to be convinced by Y's arguments. Even those who might agree with Y might be put offby his frequent references to behavior. Will human linguistics turn out to be a new behaviorism? Y has (p.c.) disavowed any connection to 'Skinner's ideas', but reinventing the wheel, even the square wheel ofbehaviorism , can happen as easily inadvertently as intentionally. Many of the consequences of Y's approach remain to be worked out. In the meantime, linguists concerned with the foundations of their discipline would be well advised to read this book. Department of English and Comparative Literature University of Cincinnati P.O. Box 210069 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0069 Rethinking linguistic relativity. Ed. by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. (Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language 17.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 488 Reviewed by Jill Brody, Louisiana State University The concept of linguistic relativity is one of the most fascinating and troubling issues in the study of language. In its guise as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis it has been alternately compelling and repellent and more often than not altogether misunderstood. The relationship between language , culture, and thought has, of course, a much deeper history antedating Sapir and Whorf, who never conceived of their work as articulating an hypothesis or even as necessarily scientifically testable. The recent era of scorn for notions of linguistic relativity seems to be giving way to reconsideration as developments in understanding the component issues of language, culture, and thought allow for new thinking about their interrelationship. Gumperz & Levinson have brought together a group of scholars who see value in reexploring linguistic relativity in fresh ways or who reengage their previous work from the perspective of relativity. Some papers REVIEWS639 reexamine the relationship between language, thought, and culture in a critical fashion from recent vantage points on the respective topics while others expand the scope oflanguage phenomena that can be considered relativistically. The general introduction, the introductions to Parts I and IV, and three out of fourteen papers (by Pascal Boyer, Herbert H. Clark, and John Lucy) are the only places where the work of Sapir and/or Whorf is directly discussed rather than simply briefly mentioned. In...