The Dialogic Species: A Linguistic Contribution to the Social Sciences by Claude Hagège (review)

Book Reviews95 effort to warn Adam and Samson, God has rendered them entirely responsible for their falls and so has hastened their respective regenerations. God thus lovingly provides a conviction ofguilt which hastens spiritual renovation. While this argument at first seems to verge on casuistry, Gallagher quite compellingly points out that Samson received divine prompting to marry the Woman of Timna. He was not the helpless victim of his own lust; rather, his marriage supplied him with the means of exacting retribution against God's enemies. Thus, the Woman ofTimna becomes an agent whom God uses to bring Samson to a recognition ofhis own guilt. Moreover, the Biblical Samson's assignation with Dalila is a selfish affair while in Milton's text he has public political reasons. He is depicted as understandably confused because his earlier marriage had received God's sanction. Gallagher concludes his book with a thought-provoking comment on the contemporary debate over charges that Milton was, or was not, a misogynist. He observes that the denunciations ofKatherine M. Rogers and Sandra Gilbert do not finally disturb him; instead, he is concerned about the grounds and tactics used by female scholars to defend Milton. According to Gallagher, to discuss Eve's fall as developing in "causally related stages" is to adopt the misogynistic attitudes of Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Browne, and others; he rightly insists that Milton's remark that Eve is "yet sinless" (PL 9.659) cannot be ignored. Gallagher adds that perhaps Milton should not have tried to "revise" the misogynistic spirit of scripture, but instead should have engaged in a revisionist critique. We are fortunate that Philip Gallagher set out to write a revisionist critique that also does much to "revise" and correct our reading of Milton. Milton, the Bible, and Misogyny has particular poignancy because Philip Gallagher died suddenly and tragically on July 1, 1987, leaving the monograph complete in manuscript. Eugene Cunnar of New Mexico State and Gail Mortimer ofthe University ofTexas at El Paso guided the manuscript through the press, responding to editorial suggestions made by the manuscript's readers and making corrections when necessary. JEAN R. BRINK Arizona State University CLAUDE HAGÈGE. The Dialogic Species: A Linguistic Contribution to the Social Sciences. Trans. Sharon L. Shelly. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. 288 p. It has been said, "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." On this basis, certainly no one could call Hagège a criminal, since his goal in The Dialogic Species is no less than "to redefine the role of language in the definition ofthe human species" and "to reveal the contribution that linguistics may still make to the elucidation of humanity" (viii). Since this book won two prestigious prizes in France, evidently the audience for whom Hagège wrote it was satisfied with the results. However, perhaps due to differences in American and French linguistic researchers or readers, the book is not as successful with an American audience. 96Rocky Mountain Review The main problem lies in Hagège's topic selection and organization. The book is divided into three parts. The first is supposed to describe "some of the principal directions of research on speech," the second, "the importance of linguistics to knowledge about the human species," and the third, "the linguistic theory ofhumanity and society which may be constructed upon these foundations" (viii). While an American introduction to linguistics would focus on phonetics and phonology, word formation, and phrase and sentence structure, Hagège covers all these subjects in about ten pages embedded in a discussion of language typology in chapter 3. Instead, most of his book is devoted to topics considered marginal in most introductory texts: theories about the origins of language, the interaction of oral language and writing, the development of creóles, and the relationship between language and thought. While these are all interesting areas, Hagège's treatment of them cannot be understood without a fairly strong background in linguistics, a strange prerequisite for an introductory text. In addition, he makes a number of statements that would be considered controversial by other linguists, yet he never suggests any alternative proposals. For example, he flatly states that "linguistics is becoming...