Language in society: An introduction to sociolinguistics By Suzanne Romaine (review)

844LANGUAGE, VOLUME 73, NUMBER 4 (1997) IV. Language: The socio-cultural context, ed. by Frederick J. Newmeyer, 140-61. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Department of Linguistics University of Ottawa 70 Laurier Ave. E. Ottawa, Ontario KlN 6N5 Canada [s061297@aix1 .uottawa.ca] Language in society: An introduction to sociolinguistics. By Suzanne Romaine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. xii, 235. Reviewed by Donald Winford, The Ohio State University A useful overview of certain key areas in the field of sociolinguistics, this book fills a need for a popular introduction aimed at the uninitiated and linguistically unsophisticated reader. Its emphasis is more on providing basic information on the general relationship between language and society than on exploring theoretical issues, methodological frameworks, and the like. In this sense, it is not an academic introduction or a textbook in the mold of other available introductions to the discipline. This is not to say that the book is not the product of extensive and serious scholarship. The broad scope of the subjects it covers and the substantial annotated references provided at the end of each chapter testify to the author's wide knowledge and careful preparation. The volume is organized into eight chapters: the first seven deal with traditional areas of sociolinguistics, while the eighth briefly outlines the author's view ofthe status of sociolinguistics as a discipline. The book's coverage is restricted to relationships between language use on the one hand and social categories and institutions on the other. These are areas traditionally covered by Labovian-type correlational approaches or by the sociology of language. There is no coverage of the areas referred to variously as discourse analysis or conversation analysis, which are usually also included under the umbrella of sociolinguistics. Ch. 1, 'Language in society/society in language', covers the traditional criteria for distinguishing dialects, languages, accents, styles, and so on. Some of the examples used for illustration, particularly those from the linguistic situation in Papua New Guinea, add an original twist to the presentation. This aside, the discussion of these key concepts and others such as speech community, communicative competence, and the like is couched in very general terms and is clearly pitched at a relatively unsophisticated audience. At the end there is brief mention of the relationship between language and world-view, which hardly does justice to this important aspect of the language/society relationship. Ch. 2, 'Language choice', explores the linguistic options available to speakers in multi- (including bi-) lingual situations. The concepts discussed here include sociolinguistic domains, diglossia, code switching, and language shift. Each is illustrated by brief summaries of well-known case studies, some classic, like Ferguson's seminal paper on diglossia and Blom and Gumperz's pioneering work on codeswitching in Hemnesberget, Norway, and some more recent, like Dorian 's work on language death and Myers-Scotton's work on codeswitching. Unfortunately, the author makes no attempt to present any principled view of how social factors constrain language choice. In a chapter of this sort, one would expect some discussion of attempts to formulate general principles or theoretical frameworks to explain the social motivations of language choice, but we find none. No mention is made, for instance, of the important contribution of social psychologists like Howard Giles and others who pioneered work in speech accommodation theory, or that of language attitude researchers like Lambert (1967). There is passing mention of the acts of identity hypothesis of LePage and Tabouret-Keller (1985), as well as MyersScotton 's work on the social motivations of codeswitching, but no attempt is made to elaborate on or appraise the wider frameworks that these authors have devised. Another striking omission REVIEWS845 here, as elsewhere in the book, is the failure to discuss the significant contributions of the ethnography of speaking, the methodological framework that anthropological linguists like Hymes (1974), Saville-Troike (1989), and others have formulated for the investigation of the language/culture relationship. Ch. 3, 'Sociolinguistic patterns', reviews correlational (quantitative) approaches to variation in monolingual situations. There is brief discussion of earlier studies of the social differentiation of language dating back to the 1960's and 1970's and more detailed discussion of factors like class, gender, age...