Reception and response: Hearer creativity and the analysis of spoken and written texts Ed. by Graham McGregor and R. S. White (review)

BOOK NOTICES 235 probably have been more appropriate. This is especially true since L attempts to give a fairly narrow transcription of the language segments he provides. Consider, for example, gaumm for gam 'so' (120), yago for yatgo 'one' (121), and mai for mhhaih 'is not' (159): though the first member of each pair is a common variant, the transcriptions are given without explanation. The result is sometimes confusing, since Yale romanization is typically used to give the standard citation form rather than a phonetic transcription . Another problem arises with the description of the data. Considering the central practical and theoretical importance L attaches to natural data, the reader would benefit from additional information about the data and how it was collected; only one paragraph is devoted to this topic (26-27). This is a good book and a fine contribution to the literature on particles. It should become a standard source for anyone interested in the nebulous category of particles, in Chinese or in other languages. [Dana S. Bourgerie, Brigham Young University.] Reception and response: Hearer creativity and the analysis of spoken and written texts. Ed. by Graham McGregor and R. S. White. London & New York: Routledge, 1990. Pp. x, 259. $62.50. This is a curious volume. Both the subtitle and the introduction raise expectations that are not fulfilled by most of the contributions. The editors point out that 'the active and creative abilities of listeners and readers deserve as much attention as the skills of speakers and writers ' and claim to 'focus on the role of hearers and readers because it is they, as receiver-responders , who are the actual arbiters of what becomes meaningfully determinant in an interpretive sense' (3, emphasis in original). This is an interesting and important topic, but unfortunately few of the contributors have anything to say about hearers or readers, other than the obvious fact that in the first case participants in linguistic encounters have to pay attention to what the other person is saying in order to respond . There is even equivocation, as in the chapter by Deborah Cameron & Deborah Hills (52-68), which is about radio 'listeners' as a social group and mainly examines how talkshow hosts deal with callers; it has nothing to do with listening as such. Similarly, the chapter by Christine Devonshire & Susan Cordwell (196-215) is supposed to be about the responses of students to reading Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter, but we learn very little about the students' responses and instead are given the authors' own reading of the text. There are two chapters about reader response theory, a favorable one by R. S. White (242-59) and a more critical one by Robert Sharpe (181-95), and an account by Mark Corner of some recent biblical criticism (21641 ). All the chapters have something ofinterest, but they do not provide much information about actual hearers or readers. Nor does the chapter by Peter Goodrich, subtitled 'Listening in legal settings' (11-36), which is mainly about cross-examination. Richard G. Tedeschi's chapter on Therapeutic listening' (37-49) is about listening but not about language, as his conclusion illustrates: The ideal therapeutic listener would be a psychotherapist who is conversant with his own inner life and not frightened by its contents' (49). The chapter by Christine Callender & Deborah Cameron (160-78), about black pentecostal preaching, apparently justifies its inclusion because the congregation are 'responsive listeners' (177); but it is mostly about the responses. More relevant are the chapter on simultaneous interpreting by Ian Mason (145-59), describing a pilot study for an approach that shows promise for further investigation, and Graham McGregor's account (99-1 11) of the responses lay judges made to segments of taped speech, though it mainly shows the difficulty such individuals have in articulating comments on the quality of speech and does not say much about their hearing ability. The chapter by Nikolas Coupland, Karen Henwood, Justine Coupland, & Howard Giles (112-44) describes how younger women responded to 'painful self-disclosures' from elderly women. This is part of an ambitious project that will no doubt produce some interesting findings, but again the chapter does not contain much information on hearing, being mainly...