Book Review: Coulmas: Sociolinguistics

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Forwarded from Linguist-List,

AUTHOR: Coulmas, Florian
TITLE: Sociolinguistics
SUBTITLE: The Study of Speakers' Choices
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1719.html

Simo K. Mattaa, School of Modern Languages and Translation
Studies, University of Tampere, Finland.

This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the main issues with
which sociolinguistics is engaged. It is particularly suitable for
undergraduate education: while some of the concepts might be difficult to
grasp, they are presented in an easily accessible form and combined with
numerous concrete examples, which makes understanding them easier.
Besides, SOCIOLINGUISTICS is a valuable reference book for anyone
interested in the social life of language.

The introductory chapter examines theories of language and language
variation within different traditions of linguistic. Language has a
biological basis, on the one hand, it lives in society, on the other. Both
aspects need to be studied. However, (theoretical)  linguistics cannot
explain linguistic diversity: only an exploration of the social side of
language can. Starting with Saussure's mention of language being a social
fact, i.e., a code shared within a language community, the chapter
discusses differences between sociolinguistics ('language as a social
fact') and autonomous linguistics ('language as a natural fact'). These
two approaches should be regarded as complementary rather than mutually
exclusive. Indeed, while 'biolinguistics' disregards the historical
dimension of language, this aspect is crucial in approaches stressing the
social side of language. As the subtitle of the textbook suggests, choice
is a key notion in sociolinguistics. Thus, its aim is to study individual
choices affecting speech behaviour insofar as these choices build up
collective choices. Since cooperative behaviour within a speech community
requires appropriate usage of unmarked choices, linguistic socialization
consists primarily of learning to master the difference between marked and
unmarked choices.

Chapter Two examines the social stratification of language and the often
uneasy distinction between standard and dialect. While language variation
is universal and has been the subject of inquiry in several cultures,
variationist sociolinguistics is essentially a Western science. Thus,
concepts developed within this paradigm should be applied with caution to
other societies and other times, for there are diverging patterns of
assigning prestige to particular speech behaviour. Numerous examples are
used to illustrate the culture- specific nature of dialectal fragmentation
based on geographical or social stratification. Special emphasis is placed
on the fact that not only social class and geographical location but also
factors such as gender, ethnicity, race, occupation, etc. should be taken
into account within the variationist paradigm. On the other hand, while
sociolinguists need a model of social stratification for their studies,
such abstractions are always artificial and arbitrary. Indeed, rather than
concentrating on social indexing through isolated dialects, today's
sociolinguistics is more interested in dialects and populations in
contact, as well as the ways in which speakers accommodate their speech in
each particular situation.

While there is a difference between the ways in which men and women speak
in all language communities which have been studied, these differences are
not always consistent. Chapter Three, which examines the relation between
language and gender, provides various intriguing examples of lexical,
phonological, and discourse- related studies about gender as a discrete
sociolinguistic variable, yet contingent upon other factors, such as age,
culture, situation, education, etc. A good part of the chapter is
dedicated to the political dimension of language and gender: no other area
of (socio) linguistic inquiry has been more politicized.

Chapter Four scrutinizes age as a factor of sociolinguistic variation.
Not only the particularities of 'deviant' age cohorts, such as infancy and
old age, but also those of adulthood, i.e., the norm, are examined.  The
presentation of studies of Japanese 'high-school-girl' talk provides a
particularly interesting example for classroom discussion.  This chapter
also considers the relation between old age and language attrition, as
well as beliefs and attitudes related to age.

The topic of Chapter Five is language change over time. Language, within
this chapter, is understood as an event rather than a thing;  indeed,
language per se, for instance a sound segment, does not change. Rather,
people change the way they pronounce sounds, i.e., they CHOOSE
differently. From this speaker-centred perspective, language change is
best understood in terms of apparent time (as opposed to real time) --
since the age gap between different generations corresponds to a certain
amount of time, linguistic variation between these generations indicates
linguistic change in time. Thus, the concept of apparent time allows
combining synchronic and diachronic linguistics. The chapter presents
fascinating longitudinal studies of linguistic change over generations. It
also discusses the increased prestige and dissemination of non-standard
varieties spoken in big cities and discusses different points of view
concerning the origins of linguistic change.

Chapter Six is dedicated to politeness studies, a major sub-field of
sociolinguistics today. The chapter includes the discussion of the
concepts of face, markedness, and cooperation, which form the general
framework from which politeness arises, and presents a comprehensive
overview of research on linguistic politeness in different languages, in
particular Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, and Japanese.

While the first part of the book deals with micro-level choices, Part Two
presents sociolinguistic phenomena related to macro-level choices.
Code-switching, the topic of Chapter Seven, is examined from the viewpoint
of speakers engaging in this practice ('Who switches'?), the ways in which
this is done ('How'?), and the reasons why code-switching occurs ('Why'?).
The term 'code' is preferred instead of 'language' because switching can
happen both between varieties of one language and different languages. The
chapter also discusses the relation between code-switching and
bilingualism.  Examples of different types of bilingual behaviour, most of
which cannot be classified as code-switching, provide particularly useful
material for classroom discussion.

Diglossia and bilingualism, in Chapter Eight, are defined by using several
examples from throughout the world. The chapter discusses issues such as
writing and standardization, linguistic ideology, genetic relation between
language varieties as an alleged prerequisite for diglossia, status and
function, domains, accommodation, and the measurement of bilingualism.

The ways in which languages spread, disappear, and resist attrition is the
topic of Chapter Nine. While the spread of today's major languages and
their symbolic strength compared to their speaker populations is explained
in detail in this chapter, the discussion of the languages of the Internet
is particularly thought-provoking. The chapter also examines language
loyalty and ethnolinguistic vitality and concludes with a discussion of
the overwhelming presence of English.

Chapter Ten deals with individual, social, and national identity as
related to language. The notion of a stable, uncontested identity is
challenged: linguistic identities can be multiple and they can be
constructed.

Chapter Eleven concentrates on language planning: it explains the reasons
why language planning exists and the many measures it involves, again with
numerous examples from different language communities. The chapter also
includes a short discussion of the Western bias of language planning.

Writing, writing systems, and the passage from oral to written usage are
themes of Chapter Twelve, comprising a discussion of the political
implications of choosing a language, a variety, a writing system and a
script, and spelling conventions.

Chapter Thirteen, 'The language of choice,' discusses the role of
English as a linguistic super-power.

There is a concise glossary of key terms at the end of the book. Each
chapter concludes with study questions and selected references for further
reading, which can be quite useful in the sociolinguistics classroom. In
addition, students will find summaries of main points at the end of each
chapter particularly helpful. Due to abundant examples of sociolinguistic
phenomena in different language communities, the text is accessible even
to a newcomer in the field;  references to both classic and contemporary
sociolinguistic research make this textbook a useful resource for anyone.
The division between micro-choices (Part One), related to variationist
sociolinguistics, and macro-choices (Part Two), dealing with sociology of
language, works relatively well even though the distinction is not always
easy to make and can be quite arbitrary. In fact, this distinction could
have been made explicit in the introduction rather than in Chapter Seven.

While a textbook is not the default forum for the discussion of
epistemological or theoretical problems of a discipline, the criticism of
the notion of language in theoretical linguistics and the Western bias of
certain sub-fields of sociolinguistics, language planning in particular,
can be used to stimulate a lively discussion in class. On the other hand,
the book does not tackle the essentialist vein of the entire
sociolinguistic enterprise. For example, while the constructed, free-
floating nature of identities is elaborated to some extent, this is not
taken into account when discussing, for instance, language and gender. To
characterize 'sex' as 'a compulsory exercise, reproduction' and 'gender'
as 'the fun of it, an art, a cultural achievement' is somewhat surprising
indeed.

There is little discussion in this textbook and in sociolinguistics in
general about the ways in which others interpret, acknowledge, and accept
the choices people make when using language in order to be indexed in a
particular way. While this reflects the fact that there are few studies of
the topic, it also generates a few questions. Thus, if all language USE
cannot be but a choice, the interpretation of linguistic, social, and
political meanings is a choice, too. Indeed, if sociolinguistics studies
social identities constructed in and through language, would it be
possible to study the linguistic construction of sociolinguistic
categories as well? After all, these categories appear to be based on the
assumption that it is possible to interpret why and how people make
choices governing their language use. Finally, could there be a place for
a sociolinguistics of LANGUAGE which does not take for granted the unity
of the sociolinguistic ideal speaker with monolithic intentions, for a
sociolinguistics concentrating on the ways in which language in use, once
it is brought into being by the socially contingent speaking subject, does
things?

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Simo K. Mattaa received his Ph.D. from the Department of French,
University of California at Berkeley in May 2004. He teaches French
Linguistics at the University of Tampere, Finland. Research interests:
sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, translation studies, language
ideologies.

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