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90Rocky Mountain Review JOHN E. JOSEPH and TALBOT J. TAYLOR, eds. Ideologies of Language. New York: Routledge, 1990. 245 p. This integrated collection ofessays, the first volume in the Routledge Politics of Language Series, engages a range of crucial language-oriented issues. Perhaps even more important is that this book is written in language that scholars from disciplines outside of linguistics proper should find lucid. The text's major premise, that the study of linguistics (or any other discipline, for that matter) is ideologically based—despite linguists' oft-invoked claims of scientific objectivity—is effectively demonstrated by the repeated applications of specific examples to various abstract linguistic issues. The book contains three separate sections, with the opening chapter (by Taylor) partially focusing on two essentially irreconcilable perspectives of language use, prescriptivism and descriptivism. Taylor argues that unbiased descriptivism, embraced as a matter of course by most linguists, is neither entirely appropriate nor possible, eis applied to human endeavor; rather, it is an ideal and thus dependent upon ideological interpretation. In chapter two, Tony Crowley presents what is perhaps the definitive short history of linguistics, in the process deconstructing linguistic history after the example of Roland Barthes. Crowley concludes that two disparate linguistic philosophies have emerged: one (after Saussure) with language as the tool and mirror ofa unified and stable society, the other (elfter Bakhtin) with language as the basic expression of societal conflict. Crowley also pursues a topic of chapter one (one which arises again later in this book), that of "standard language" and its accompanying prescriptive tradition; Crowley argues convincingly that those who promote standards of language may be engaging in "the politics of language rather than its scientific study" (48). Joseph's essay (chapter three), on the influence of Saussure on Bloomfield and Chomsky, offers insight into the work ofthree giants ofmodern linguistics. Bloomfield fares least favorably, because of his behaviorist stance and his expressed views on Saussure. Joseph asserts that Saussure's position among the founders of linguistics, on the other hand, has been improved recently by Chomsky's impressive contributions and continuing efforts to refine his own theories. The last essayist of the first section, Deborah Cameron, illuminates what may be the major problem within sociolinguistics, the struggle between standard and "other" language forms. Cameron claims that the defining of standard forms (a topic ritually skirted by linguists) has allure, because standard forms lead quite naturally to the use ofquantitative paradigms, which in turn lend credence to the claim modern linguistics has to scientific status and academic prestige. Section two ofthe book outlines, in three short chapters, three model studies of language. First, the work of the sixteenth-century Latin philologist, Cittadini, examined here by Michael Ward, provides an admirably workable prototypical concept for the study of diverging and converging strains of vernacular and prestige dialects, an understanding of which concept may be applied to the study ofnearly any language. The author ofthe second chapter ofthis section, Pierre Swiggers, using a clever metaphorical structure, skewers Book Reviews91 the French for their linguistic chauvinism, past and present. The obvious implication by Swiggers, however, is that all language users are biased. Paul Roberge concludes the middle section of the book with a chapter on the development of Afrikaans. This chapter has relevance for linguists and other scholars not only because Afrikaner linguistics illustrates some of the many complex ideological factors involved in language development, but because the politics of South Africa continue to hold world interest. Part three contains the last four chapters and embraces several key issues concerning language and ideology. Roy Harris begins this section by revealing why, how, eind to what extent linguistic science is capable ofdecontextualizing language, basing much of his argument on important precepts of Mill and Rousseau. Following Harris, a chapter by Pieter Desmet, Johan Roorych, and Swiggers presents an examination of several dictionaries from the French Revolutionary era, an examination showing the difficulty in separating linguistic form from content, meaning from ideology. Next, Peter Mühlhäusler demonstrates the primacy ofwriting over speech, as documented in the contact between South Pacific Islanders and Europeans. He shows that the advent of literacy in non-literate societies, regardless of the language used, ultimately...

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