Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English (review)

This edition of a book that originally appeared in 1985 represents a considerable revision of the earlier editions. The fact that the book is in its third edition attests to its popularity, likely more widespread in Great Britain than in the United States. The slightly amended title signals major changes: Two chapters have been substantively altered, and a totally new chapter has been added along with a sizeable American component. In their preface the authors admit that what has prompted their revisions is the considerable politicization of the issues they deal with. In the United States it is particularly the Ebonics controversy; in Britain it is ‘the great grammar debate’.

The book provides a reasoned examination for the nonprofessional of the issues involved in language standardization and language testing. The authors sketch the history and social background to standardization and its concomitant prescriptivism. With regard to testing, the book explores in some depth the considerable educational and social consequences of ignoring such aspects as language variation and change, language as identity, and the differences between spoken and written language.

One of the more interesting points they have to make concerns the role of linguists who, for various methodological and theoretical reasons, choose to ignore variation and/or choose to rely entirely on written sources for their data. Despite such linguists’ claims to being objective or descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive), their choices are not inconsequential and reveal common prejudices. The authors suggest that such researchers may also be responsible for the promulgation of an elitist standard.

Their book stands now more than ever as a weighty counterbalance to some of the more polemic diatribes, especially those in the British press. Indeed the book is designed more for British readers than for American ones, despite the references to American issues. Nonetheless, it is well worth an American perusal since the basic issues are the same; only the factual bases and the historical backgrounds are different. In fact, their chapter on testing has even more significance for American professionals, parents, and students since Americans tend to put much greater stock in standardized testing.

Americans will enjoy particularly Ch. 9, ‘Two nations divided by the same language? The standard language ideology in Britain and the United States’. The debate over ‘grammar’ in Britain differs from American language issues, and seems just as trivial, but also, as the authors and their sources attest, fiercely emotive. Where race and ethnicity are important for Americans, class-tied variation is what exercises the British. The authors do an excellent job identifying the ideological underpinnings and tracing the social and historical reasons for these differences. The one criticism I would make of this chapter, and indeed of the entire book, is that the American examples, especially the discussion in this chapter, might be better diffused throughout the book.

The book is definitely meant for nonspecialists, defining such concepts as the ‘arbitrariness of the linguistic sign’, ‘polysemy’, and ‘communicative competence’. The authors also provide thumbnail sketches of sizeable literatures, e.g., quantitative studies in Ch. 5. For policymakers, educators, and practitioners of language testing or indeed any testing involving language, this book should be of some value. The authors give enough references to the literature to allow such individuals to follow up on their more specific interests.