Linguistic Expeditions (review)

BOOK REVIEWS91 adjustments to the job, their beliefs and social attitudes, adaptation to the factory , attitudes toward unions, and other general social concerns. The author concludes with a somewhat mixed review of the convergence theory. This is because he tried meticulously to test a series of hypotheses that focused on the adaptability of the workers and, in so doing, tried to discover certain internal structural consistencies. Rather than just limiting the theory to "core" elements of the industrial system, he correctly ventured further to test the theory. Though somewhat lacking in continuity from chapter to chapter and despite an obvious need for a more careful and thoughtful construction of items, Bae's presentation is generally informative. However, considering the valuable information obtained in this study, I am disappointed that it was not designed for a broader readership. The strategy in the design of this book should have been to minimize the technical and theoretical aspects of the study and to present more of the substantive aspects in narrative form. Certainly the methodological parts and the statistical tests of significance could have been included in an appendix. An additional series of articles could have captured the more technical and theoretical readership and a more inclusive readership could have been captured with a more "descriptive" study of the emergent factory worker. The author could have modeled his work on Ely Chinoy's Automobile Workers and the American Dream. When I visited the Hyundai plant at Ulsan in the summer of 1985, 1 was especially impressed with the relative youthfulness of the workers. Young workers perhaps just a generation removed from the simple agrarian life: How do they perceive the changes that have taken place during their lifetime? The author mentions giving little attention to personal lives and family relationships in this book. I can imagine the trauma experienced by every member of the family when the mobility ethic clashes with the traditional kinship ties. The concluding remarks by the author suggest further pursuits in this area. It is also worthwhile to consider expanding the readership. George Won University of Hawaii Linguistic Expeditions, by Ho-min Sohn. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing, 1986. 550 pp. Bibliography. $19.50. In his preface to this anthology, Ho-min Sohn expresses the hope that the "volume will be of modest service to those who are interested to learn about linguistic facts of some languages less known to the western world." In stating his goal in this way, the author has unconsciously supplied additional empirical support for his own sociolinguistic generalization that "while modesty, an aspect of indirectness, is negligible in American culture, it is highly valued in Korea. . . a key in Korean communicative acts." (p. 462) Indeed, Sohn views the results of his efforts far too modestly, for he has certainly put together a superb collection of his writings that will provide general linguists, linguistic 92BOOK REVIEWS specialists, and students of the Korean language with a vast wealth of interesting and serviceable data and with many challenging ideas of a theoretical nature. As the contents of this volume and the list of the author's works in its bibliography indicate, Sohn is a linguist of great versatility, who has done extensive work in two fields of areal linguistics: (i) Korean and Japanese, and (ii) Micronesian languages (Ulithian, Woleaian, Kwara'ae, and others). To the languages in both of these groups he has applied methods and theories of phonological , morphological, syntactic, semantic, and historical-comparative analysis. Not only does he cover these various "bread-and-butter" areas with equal skill, but he also manifests an adept approach to sociolinguistic issues and matters of language pedagogy. In treating various comparative problems, he further shows sensitive understanding of semantic and pragmatic values in English. The articles in this collection are separated into four major topic areas: (i) Phonology and Writing Systems, with emphasis on Micronesian languages but with one paper focusing on issues in Korean romanization; (ii) Syntax, Semantics , and Pragmatics, the largest section, with eleven articles covering Korean, including some comparative reference to Japanese and English; (iii) Historical and Comparative Studies, with three papers on Austronesian issues and one on the status of Korean-Japanese comparative work; and (iv) Sociolinguistics...