Diversity and development in English-related creoles Edited by Ian F. Hancock (review)

REVIEWS195 and theoretical innovations. Her decision to study Montreal French came at a time when official advertising was informing francophone Montrealers that speaking 'well' (i.e. not like Montrealers) was a prerequisite to self-respect. S and her co-workers' quantitative demonstration of the systematicity of the vernacular, and of its stratified relationship with more normative French, contributed much to the struggle for legitimacy of the Montreal variety. In the same spirit, her ethnographically based conviction of the communicative richness of Tok Pisin led to her successful search for grammaticalization processes in the language. This added a new dimension to the increasing linguistic respectability of a formerly much stigmatized pidgin, now a national language of Papua New Guinea. The research in this book may be said to exemplify modern sociolinguistics. It grows out of a fundamental interest in minority dialects and colonialized languages—with a concomitant critique of normativism, prescriptivism, and other elitisms. It is characterized by a search for scientific explanation accountable to the data of everyday linguistic interaction. Finally, it represents a sustained and well-considered effort to ascertain where, how, and why sociological and pragmatic considerations impinge on grammatical structure. Indeed , although it is composed of a number of distinct papers, this collection would make an ideal textbook for the serious student of sociolinguistics. REFERENCES Labov, William. 1979. Where does the linguistic variable stop? A response to Beatriz Lavandera. University of Pennsylvania, ms. Lavandera, Beatriz. 1978. Where does the sociolinguistic variable stop? Language and Society 7.171-82. Sankoff, David, and Pierrette Thibault. 1981. Weak complementarity: Tense and aspect in Montreal French. Syntactic change, ed. by Brenda Johns & David Strong (Natural language studies, 25), 205-16. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Thibault, Pierrette. 1982. Style, sens, fonction. La sociolinguistique dans les pays de langue romane, ed. by Norbert Dittmar & B. Schlieben-Lange, 73-9. Tübingen: Narr. [Received 17 July 1985.] Diversity and development in English-related creóles. Edited by Ian F. Hancock . Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1985. Pp. viii, 168. Reviewed by Chris Corne, University ofAuckland This volume is dedicated to the memory of Jan Voorhoeve (tJanuary 30, 1983), a leading figure of the first generation of postwar creolists. It is a fitting memorial, in spite of an unconscionable delay in publication, imputable entirely to the publisher (in fact, the volume contains a paper by Voorhoeve). This delay, in a field notable for theoretical ferment, is highly regrettable: some of the papers (such as P. Stoller's contribution) would have had real impact when written, but in 1985 they are slightly ho-hum. Nonetheless, the book contains useful discussion, and is a worthwhile contribution. If there is another drawback, it is the rather eclectic choice of papers. Han- 196LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986) cock has selected them so that widely separated areas are represented, as well as a wide variety of topics (one of these, S. M. Broderick's contribution, is especially divergent). The result certainlyjustifies the Diversity of the title; but the bottom line is that we are left with a fragmented picture of the field. Of course, this may merely reflect the fact that 'creóle studies', even 'Englishrelated creóle studies', is indeed a bit of a hotch-potch. Some scholars see genesis and related issues, including sociolinguistic historiography, as central; others are concerned with linguistic variation and the problems which it poses for theory, for sensible literacy programs, or for understanding of the societies and their culture; still others consider that the major effort should be toward better and more complete descriptions of particular creóle languages. AU such approaches are perfectly legitimate; the question is whether one relatively slim volume should try to represent a wide range of both languages/communities and approaches. My feeling is that it should not. Before briefly discussing the contributions to this particular volume, I want to comment in more general terms on compendia of this sort. They are in effect equivalent to single issues ofjournals, unrefereed except by the editor, devoted to a 'single' topic. For such collections , editors should ideally be prepared to step heavily on the toes of contributors —forcing conformity to an editorial world view, or to a single moreor -less unified theme...