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864LANGUAGE, VOLUME 73, NUMBER 4 (1997) psycholinguistics chapter; it focuses on the problem of overregularization in young children's speech, e.g. why English-speaking children on occasion say holded instead of held. Central to the solution is the 'Blocking principle', which Pinker does not define but which he first describes as 'a piece of adult psychology that causes the experience of hearing an irregular form like held to block the subsequent application of the regular "add -ed" rule to that item' (111) and subsequently as 'part of the child's innate universal grammar' (114), together with the evidently psychological principle that memory retrieval is fallible but improves with increased exposure to exemplars. Pinker contrasts this solution with one which uses analogical pattern matching as implemented by a parallel distributed processor (PDP) and argues that the solution involving the blocking principle and the fallibility of memory is superior, except for cases in which past tenses are formed on analogy with other irregular past tense patterns, e.g. forming brang as the past tense form of bring on analogy with sang as the past tense form of sing (124-7). He suggests a resolution of the 'ongoing debate in cognitive science over whether rule systems or connectionist networks are better models of language processes. Both approaches might be right, but for different parts of the mind: rules for the combinatorial system underlying grammar, networks for the memory underlying word roots' (128). This solution is unlikely to please partisans on either side. In any event, Pinker's solution is marred by his elevation of the blocking principle to the states of a linguistic universal. If it is a psychological mechanism, as he first suggests, it does not rule out the possibility that a given verb such as light can have distinct past tense forms such as lit and lighted. At most, it imposes a strong tendency for verbs to have unique past tense forms. However, ifit is a linguistic universal, as he later suggests, then that possibility is incorrectly ruled out. Hence it cannot be a linguistic universal, at least not an inviolable one. Department of Linguistics PO Box 210028 University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721-0028 [langendt@arizona.edu] Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self. Ed. by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz. New York & London: Routledge, 1995. Pp. x, 512. Paper $22.95. Reviewed by Francine Frank, University ofAlbany, SUNY This collection of nineteen essays explores current approaches to the study of language and gender. In their introduction, the editors link the new research to the 'field's foundation text', Robin Lakoffs 1975 book, Language and woman's place (1). One link is Lakoffs identification ofdominant linguistic ideologies, a process that constitutes 'the overriding project' of this volume (8). The organization of the book into three sections reflects 'three general analytical stances in the new feminist scholarship' (9). Part 1, 'Mechanisms of hegemony and control', contains six essays that examine the role of language in maintaining dominant ideologies of gender. In the first essay (25-50), Robin Tolmach Lakoff argues for a theoretical model that views dominance rather than difference as the crucial explanatory factor for gender differences in language. The essays that follow employ diverse methodologies and examine a variety ofcontexts—the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings; family dinner conversations; the internet; therapeutic institutions; and teen magazines. Despite this diversity, all are similarly grounded in the concept of an imbalance of power. Focusing on 'interpretive control', a symbolic silencing of women in public discourse, Lakoff REVIEWS865 cites the media attention accorded to several recent events as evidence that 'women have begun to achieve true public desilencing' (30). She discusses Hillary Rodham Clinton's repeated attempts to define herself as an 'active speaker' in the face of media efforts to depict her as 'an interpreted object' and 'one who is seen and not heard' (37). Rodham Clinton's remarks in November 1996 to a group of Australian women leaders confirm this observation: 'Clinton said she had concluded that the only way to escape . . . was to ' 'just totally withdraw, perhaps have a bag over your head when you come out into public . . . make it clear that you have no opinions . . ." ' (Times...

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