An historical study of English: Function, form and change by Jeremy Smith (review)

BOOK NOTICES 657 himself declares the kinship between his approach and Alfredo Trombetti's (viii). This book is, thus, a continuation of such a prescientific and merely intuitive way of searching for etymologies. With the same lack of methodological awareness, the author could have broadened his scope by comparing also Greek potamos with Potomac, Latin deus, and Náhuatl teotl, etc. [Gonzalo Rubio, The Johns Hopkins University .] Psychology of language: A critical introduction . By Michael Forrester. London : Sage, 1996. Pp. viii, 216. $22.95. This book centers on three forms of communication : self-communication or thinking, talk, and text. In focusing on these topics, the author hopes to outline a psychology of language with an emphasis on communication in a broad sense of the term. Meant as an introduction for the psychology student, this book is especially concerned with pointing out differences between language as a structure and the process of communication, the relationship between methodology and the study of language, and research in domains which border psychology, e.g. conversational analysis, social semiotics, deixis, power relations m talk, and narrative analysis. In addition, the author also points out how the many different areas of language study contribute to a psychology of language concerned with communication processes. The introduction provides a brief historical overview of some of the most influential theories bearing upon the contemporary study of the psychology of language and provides some background to what is to be accomplished in the following chapters. The topic of the first two chapters is the relationship between language and thinking. The importance of Chomsky's ideas for the birth of psycholinguistics is stressed, in particular his conception of the mind as a recursive engine. Next, the cognition-dominant and the language-dominant views of the study of language are discussed. The author emphasizes that the study of meaning in psychology and psycholinguistics may be better understood within the framework of pragmatics. Ch. 3, with its focus on deixis, provides a transition to the next form of communication, talking: here the author discusses the three types of deixis, how children acquire appropriate use of deictic terms, and how these terms are used in conversation . The second theme, talk, is the focus of the next four chapters. Here the work ofconversational analysis (CA) is important. The author provides a critical consideration of the contribution that CA has made to the psychology of language and indicates the differences between nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication. The author demonstrates that the study of conversation provides unique insights into how people manage their interactions, conceive of their roles and relations with each other, and may contest and reconceptualize their identities: turn taking and significance of interruptions rely on key aspects of the local management system. The next two chapters turn to the study of reading and writing. These chapters introduce the reader to semiotics and to discourse analysis. The last chapter highlights previously discussed aspects which suggest the postmodernist turn within the study of language . In an attempt to draw together the three focal points ofthis book, the emergence ofdiscourse analysis in social psychology is considered in some detail . This book provides an adequate basis and a good structure for a graduate course offered by a psychology department. It introduces the student to a large amount ofresearch in the field of psychology oflanguage , although additional reading will definitely be necessary. [Colette M. van Kerckvoorde, Simon 's Rock College.] An historical study ofEnglish: Function, form and change. By Jeremy Smith. London New York: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii, 225. $18.95. In spite of the recent increase in scholarly effort devoted to the history of the English language, the number of students who voluntarily enroll in courses on this topic remains limited. The author speculates that the reputation of language history courses as difficult and dry may be responsible for this situation. All too often, courses with a focus on the history of the English language limit themselves to providing a chronicle, a list of facts and notations, without considering some of the broader questions of causation and explanation with which the subject confronts us. Rather than being a chronicler who describes linguistic change, the author wants to be...