Handbook of language and social psychology Ed. by Howard Giles and W. Peter Robinson (review)

862 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 4 (1992) given in an Appendix entitled 'Poetic compounds in their context' (157-182); it consists of long excerpts from poems and entire poems by British authors published between the years 1956 and 1985 (5-6). A useful, detailed bibliography follows (183-202). Modern poetic word-formation in English seems an excellent choice of topic. B-B aims to 'explain our intuitions about the nature of poetry " (1). This very wording, matched by the repeated use of 'intuitive' and such metaphoric terms as 'surface forms', 'nodes', 'low-level', 'high-level', and 'percolation' show B-B's choice of a 'generative framework' , specifically that of Noam Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding (1981). Thus generative rules of compounding are used to characterize standard language and deviating poetic language. B-B's poetic principles do not include any really new ones, except perhaps the 'Principle of optional transitivity' (127-8). We find the traditional rhetorical concepts of metaphor, metonymy , synecdoche, ellipsis, and also poetic expression, iconicity, William Empson's ambiguity , and the all-important principle of contextual cohesion. Paul Garvin's creation 'foregrounding' in B-B's list is a translation of the Prague School's Czech term for 'actualization ', influenced by German Vordergrund. The description of poetic context as a principle (146-7) requires, in my opinion, expansion to lexical context and recognition of a feature of individual lexicality. This seems extremely important for the analysis of all noncontemporary poetry. I consider this book an important contribution to the analysis of poetic texts. From the point of view ofold-fashioned philology I find nothing to disagree with in B-B's applied principles. The account may be generativistic, but it does not stop with establishing a semantic 'depth' under the 'surface'. B-B never fails to return to the only visible and readable surface; this procedure I like to call the philological circle. The author's analyses always reveal an awareness that human communication is carried out on the 'surface ', and what may seem vague or ambiguous in isolated simple or compounded forms, even phrases or sentences, usually becomes very lucid iftaken as part of a complete language act, even of poetic texts. The poetic compounds described here actually fall into three categories: lexicalized compounds, e.g. crystal-clear; individually created compounds, e.g. glassclear ; and text-bound, opaque compounds, e.g. apple-grass, dream oceans, and moth-walking. [Herbert Penzl, University of California at Berkeley.] Handbook of language and social psychology . Ed. by Howard Giles and W. Peter Robinson, Chichester & New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990. Pp. 618. $160.00. Quite simply, this is an essential reference volume for any linguist working in sociolinguistics , sociopragmatics, or socially-based discourse analysis. It contains 27 chapters, each surveying a specific focus of the now-vast literature within social psychology involving language , as well as a prologue and an epilogue by the editors. While many contributors come from psychology departments on several continents, half of them have affiliations in departments of communication at American universities. The stature of the editors is assurance that these contributors, and their topics, represent the field well. Giles deserves his reputation as the premier researcher (and editor) in the field, partly due to the fact that he introduced us to speech accommodation theory, and Robinson also is a recognized authority, the author of the first text on social psychology and language (Language and social behavior, Penguin, 1972). Both the range and the specialization of topics covered here is eye-opening. Some subjects are predictable; for example, a number of chapters deal with language and social power: 'Language and social influence', by Michael Burgoon (51-72); 'Social cognition and discourse', by Teun A. Van Dijk (163-83); 'Language and control', by SiK Hung Ng (271-85); and 'Social class, social status and communicative behavior ', by Beth Haslett (329-44). There is also an informative and interpretive overview of attitudinal research in 'Language attitudes and impression formation', by James J. Bradac (387-412). Interpersonal communication figures very prominently, with five chapters on this topic in the section titled 'Language and interpersonal facework' and three specifically dealing with very closely related topics in the section titled 'Language...