Die Wiener Dialektologische Schule: Grundsätzliche Studien aus 70 Jahren Forschung Ed. by Peter Wiesinger (review)

BOOK NOTICES 215 talgic views and sentimental deploring of language change, the errors in his view of Latin, his poor knowledge and misconceptions of Old EngUsh, his poor grasp oflanguage history, and his dislike of various derivational processes as resources for expanding EngUsh. B uses these as a stepping-stone to discussion and exemplification of etymology, diachrony, neologisms, compounds (and unpredictability in meaning), acronyms, blends, folk etymology, shifts of meaning, auxiliaries, negation, and the fact that the British often use a plural verb (e.g. The team are confident) where Americans would use a singular. Ch. 3, 'Language variety', begins with an explanation of variety as the end product of change, then progresses to O's view of American English (corrupt) and its differences from British EngUsh (couched in unwarranted generalizations ), with clarifying remarks by B. He also offers some discussion of class varieties (which understandably interested O more than regional varieties), the social dimensions of linguistic competence, the work of W. Labov and J. L. DUlard, and Afro-American English. Ch. 4, 'Language mixture', discusses multilingualism and coloniaUsm, with reference to O's experiences abroad and his novels; pidgins and linguafrancas, compared to artificial varieties of EngUsh such as Basic English; English as an official and unofficial international language; the role of EngUsh as a language of wider communication ; bilingual education; and second-language acquisition. Ch. 5, 'Literary language', is devoted to style (both O's own and his comments on others'), the literary representation of regional and class dialect, statistical stylistics, Newspeak, headlines, and telegraphic style. Ch. 6, 'Language machines', looks at O's views of technology and the media—and then turns to computers, programming languages, word-processing , machine translation, and artificial intelligence . Ch. 7, 'Language abuse', treats O's viewsofeuphemism,jargon, metaphors,clichés, and related topics of style; it concludes with an unduly prescriptive section on current usage and deficiencies in writing style. B's approach to each topic, examining it first with respect to O and then more generaUy, is novel but difficult, and ultimately is less than successful. This book is at its best when dealing specificaUy with O; but it tends to ramble (sometimes rather mystifyingly, as should be evident from some of the brief chapter descriptions above) when not bound tightly to O. Parts ofthe book are clearly intended only for the general reader or for the EngUsh Uterature specialist, and wUl seem naïve and slow to the linguist (who should simply skip them). The section on computers —explaining micros, minis, mainframes, pocket computers, bits and bytes, programming languages, word-processing, and machine translation , as weU as the glossary ofcomputerese— would have been better omitted, or else more deUberately linked to 'Big Brother'. At times B is careless; e.g., Canadians may be surprised to learn that, of the US, Canada, the UK, and France, 'all but the last are English-speaking' (119). In the statements that India has 'a larger English-speaking population than before 1947— and that, worldwide, 'the number of EngUsh speakers has grown by forty per cent in the past twenty years' (122-3)—it is not made clear whether second-language speakers are included , or whether actual growth or simply population growth is involved. It is easy to construct counter-examples to B's algorithm for distinguishing restrictive from non-restrictive clauses, apart from the fact that 'it' throughout the algorithm refers ambiguously and indiscriminately to both main clauses and relative clauses —e.g., 'If it begins with "The" foUowed by a number, it is restrictive ("The two disks you sat on ...")' (175). The many examples of 'language abuse' (199-203) are not clear without explanation : Why are realm, workshop, and watchdog pretentiously archaic? Why are plastic, condition, and question meaningless words? Such problems, together with an annoying number of typographical errors, leave the impression that the book's preparation was unduly rushed in order to be pubhshed early in 1984. B should not have allowed this to happen to what is otherwise an entertaining and informative book with a refreshingly unique perspective. [Sheila M. Embleton, York University, Toronto.] Die Wiener Dialektologische Schule: Grundsätzliche Studien aus 70 Jahren Forschung. Ed. by Peter Wiesinger. (Wiener...