33.1917, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Wardhaugh, Fuller (2021)

Wed Jun 1 13:15:26 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1917. Wed Jun 01 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1917, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Wardhaugh, Fuller (2021)

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Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2022 09:15:07
From: Melissa Hauber-Özer [mhauberr at gmu.edu]
Subject: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 8th Edition

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2155.html

AUTHOR: Ronald  Wardhaugh
AUTHOR: Janet M. Fuller
TITLE: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 8th Edition
SERIES TITLE: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Wiley
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Melissa B Hauber-Özer, George Mason University

SUMMARY

This updated edition of Ronald Wardhaugh’s popular textbook provides an
overview of key theories and research on sociolinguistics targeted to
upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. The volume includes
contemporary examples and research and an expressed goal of addressing issues
of power and inequality in the text and the field of sociolinguistics more
broadly. Exploration activities are interspersed throughout each chapter to
encourage reflection and application of the content, and more in-depth
individual or cooperative exercises are included at the end of each chapter
along with recommended further reading. This edition also includes online
instructor and student resources (https://www.wiley.com/go/wardhaugh8e), which
consist of a downloadable Word document for each chapter. Instructors will
find discussion points and solutions and sample answers to chapter
explorations and exercises. Student resources contain a chapter summary,
compare and contrast exercises, review questions, terms to know, exercises and
examples, and online resources including scholarly journals focused on the
chapter’s topic. A Word version of the glossary provided in the book is also
available on the website. 

The first chapter introduces central issues in sociolinguistics, such as what
language is, what it means to ‘know’ a language, and lexical, phonetic, and
morphological variations in use. It also notes prominent areas of study and
research approaches in the field and provides an overview of the book’s 13
chapters, which are divided into four parts. 

Part 1: Languages, Communities, and Contexts

Chapter 2, ‘Languages, Dialects, and Varieties,’ establishes essential
concepts and controversies regarding the terms ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ using
a variety of examples, including an extended discussion of African American
Vernacular English (AAVE). The chapter also addresses the role of regional and
social dialects in identity, group membership, and class stratification and
introduces the terms ‘indexicality’, ‘enregisterment’, and ‘entexualization’,
illustrating them using popular memes. 

The third chapter discusses various ways that language interacts with group
identity, norms, and demarcation through national boundaries, social networks,
speech communities, or communities of practice. The second half of the chapter
tackles language attitudes and ideologies, introducing the terms ‘iconicity’,
‘erasure’ and ‘recursivity’. The exercises at the end of the chapter invite
readers into informal sociolinguistic research with their own language
networks.  

Chapter 4, ‘Language in Context: Pragmatics,’ introduces major theories of
language use in context – speech acts, Grice’s maxims, and politeness –
including the role of ‘face’ and social positioning through pronouns and terms
of address. 

Part II: Theory and Methods 

Chapter 5, ‘Language Variation and Change,’ provides an in-depth overview of
central areas of focus and quantitative methods used to study regional and
class-based variations in language use and changes over time. The chapter is
organized around three waves of variationist research and notes the variables
of social networks and gender. Identity construction through language use is
briefly addressed, but more recent factors potentially impacting change such
as globalization, immigration, and social media are not mentioned. 

Chapter 6, ‘Ethnographic Approaches in Sociolinguistics,’ while much shorter
and less in-depth than the previous chapter focusing on quantitative methods,
offers a useful survey of the main ethnographic approaches used in the field:
ethnography of communication, ethnomethodology, critical ethnography,
linguistic ethnography, and digital ethnography. The chapter also briefly
describes participant observation as a primary data collection method,
communicative competence, Hymes’ (1974) SPEAKING framework for studying
language use, and issues of insider-outsider positionality and power. 

Chapter 7 closes the section on methods with descriptions of four approaches
to discourse analysis: conversation analysis (CA), interactional
sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis (CDA), and corpus linguistics.
Distinctions between these methods (e.g., attention to social norms in CA and
on power relations in CDA) as well as areas of overlap are noted. Updates to
this edition include an exploration of #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter
discourse and both a chapter exercise and multiple additional student
exercises and resources examining former U.S. President Trump’s speech and
tweets.

Part III: Multilingual Matters

Chapter 8, ‘Languages in Contact,’ discusses various situations where multiple
languages, dialects, or varieties coexist, including patterns of use,
ideologies, attitudes, and research. The chapter also addresses issues
regarding language change and maintenance, noting prestige and stigma assigned
to certain languages or varieties (such as Haitian Creole vs. French) and
differing uses (as in the case of Classical, Modern Standard, and local Arabic
varieties), and outlines theoretical approaches to multilingualism.   

Chapter 9 examines the effects of multilingualism on language change,
specifically borrowing, structural characteristics of codeswitching, and the
development of pidgin and creole languages. Power relations between languages,
as in the colonial and migration contexts where most language contact occurs,
is briefly addressed. 

Chapter 10, ‘The Language, the Nation, and Beyond,’ delves into the ways that
language interacts with identity, ethnicity, national belonging, and
globalization, including a discussion of ethnonationalist identity
construction. Sections addressing portrayals of minority groups in the media
and identity formation in digital communications offer contemporary examples
of these patterns, for example, derogatory terms for Syrian refugees and a
focus on criminal activity in Turkish newspapers.  

Part IV: Sociolinguistics and Social Justice

Part IV begins with a contemporary discussion of ‘Language, Gender, and
Sexuality’ in Chapter 11. This chapter demonstrates ways that language
displays sexist and heterosexist norms, followed by an analysis of how gender
and sexuality are constructed and expressed in language, including key areas
of research on the topic, and then how discourse which communicates ideologies
about gender and sexuality and enforces social categories. The chapter
includes contemporary considerations of power, hetero- and cisnormativity, and
LGBTQ+ identities. 

Chapter 12 employs a social justice lens to examine ‘Sociolinguistics and
Education,’ specifically how linguistic inequality is entrenched in schooling
systems. The chapter discusses ideologies driving language policies and
impacts on student achievement in educational settings in which students speak
a non-standard or stigmatized variety/dialect, multilingual communities, and
countries where English is not a native or community language but is used as
the medium of instruction. 

The final chapter, ‘Language Policy and Planning,’ builds on several issues
raised in the preceding chapters to describe how states develop and enact
policies toward increasing or lowering the status of a minority language,
establishing a standard variety, determining the language(s) of instruction,
and prioritizing acquisition of additional languages. It then provides an
overview of research in this area and uses extended examples from the former
Soviet Union, India, Belgium, and several more countries to illustrate the
purposes and challenges involved in these processes in post-imperial,
post-colonial, and multilingual countries. Following a short discussion of
feminist language planning hearkening back to Chapter 11, the book closes with
a consideration of policy and planning efforts for endangered languages.  

EVALUATION

The text provides in-depth, interesting, coherent, and relatively balanced
coverage of key issues and trends in sociolinguistics, illustrated by
frequent, descriptive examples from various languages and regions. The book is
clearly written, user-friendly, and accessible for students possessing a basic
foundation in linguistics (e.g., the International Phonetic Alphabet and
grammatical terms). The examples, explorations, and exercises are generally
well designed to foster students’ understanding and application of the content
and provide ample material for instructors to employ as in-class activities or
formative assignments. The student resources include an interesting variety of
non-scholarly articles, humorous videos, infographics, comics, and more. When
contrasted with Suzanne Romaine’s popular text Language in Society, last
updated in 2000, Wardhaugh and Fuller offer a more extensive, interactive, and
contemporary option. 

The book contains some oversights, omissions, and errors, perhaps most
egregious being the minimal coverage (and even dismissal) of translanguaging,
a hot topic in the field (see García & Wi, 2014; Juvonen & Källkvist, 2021;
MacSwan, 2017). For instance, Chapter 7 provides an interesting overview of
discourse analysis methods but would have been improved with an introduction
to how data are analyzed in these approaches rather than simply the data
types. Although Chapter 11 addresses efforts to update gendered terms,
particularly in languages with grammatical gender, it fails to note any
counterexamples or complexities of these issues, e.g., languages without
grammatical gender or gendered pronouns and occupational titles, such as
Turkish. In Chapter 12, the authors base part of their argument about
linguistic equality on Jim Cummins’ (1979; 2003) categorization of BICS and
CALP without acknowledging Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa’s important
critiques of Cummins’ framework as stigmatizing speakers of minority languages
and dialects (Flores, 2020; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017). Oddly,
this is also the only chapter with no student resources on the website, which
seems like a significant oversight. While attending to several important
issues, Chapter 13 depends on dated literature; for example, contrary to
Skutnabb-Kangas and Fernandes’ 2008 study, Kurdish is now permitted as a
subject (although not as a medium of instruction and still highly contentious)
in Turkish schools (see Çelebi et al., 2016). There are also glaring
typographical errors (e.g., “summry” in the book referring the reader to the
companion website and on the website itself; “linguisticsss” on p. 79; the
Turkish greeting is misspelled “Hoşgeldinez” instead of “Hoşgeldiniz” on p.
214). A few extremely long URLs (including a URL for a search engine result)
are presented in the text, which readers are not likely to painstakingly type
out. These would have been better to refer to in the text and provide in the
online resources.

There are also some missed opportunities in this edition. For example, the
examples and exercises in the online resources for Chapter 6 consist of one
comic, but there are certainly an infinite number of possibilities for online
exploration of linguistic ethnography, such as referring readers to relevant
articles and having them try out digital ethnography via social media. Given
the disproportionate attention devoted to quantitative research methods in
Chapter 5, it is evident that the authors lean toward quantitative approaches.
This edition also failed to adapt to the technologies that readers will likely
use; for example, the first exercise in Chapter 7 asks students to record and
analyze radio call-in shows, but podcasts using this format would be a much
more accessible and relevant medium.

Overall, the volume provides a balanced survey of important topics, research
methods and trends, and contemporary issues in the field of sociolinguistics
and offers instructors a valuable option for advanced undergraduate or
graduate students. 

REFERENCES

Çelebi, E., Verkuyten, M., & Smyrnioti, N. (2016). Support for Kurdish
language rights in 
Turkey: The roles of ethnic group, group identifications, contact, and
intergroup perceptions. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(6), 1034–1051.

Flores, N. (2020). From academic language to language architecture:
Challenging raciolinguistic 
ideologies in research and practice. Theory Into Practice, 59(1), 22–31. 

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic
ideologies and language 
diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171,300-301.

García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and
education. Palgrave 
Macmillan.

Juvonen, P., & Källkvist, M. (2021). Pedagogical translanguaging:
Theoretical, methodological 
and empirical perspectives. Channel View Publications.

MacSwan, J. (2017). A multilingual perspective on translanguaging. American
Educational Research Journal, 54(1), 167–201.

Romaine, S. (2000). Language in society (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 

Rosa, J., & Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a
raciolinguistic 
perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621–647. 

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. & Fernandes, D. (2008). Kurds in Turkey and in (Iraqi)
Kurdistan: A 
comparison of Kurdish educational language policy in two situations of
occupation. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 3(1), 43-73.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Melissa Hauber-Özer completed her Ph.D. in International Education at George
Mason University and instructs teacher education and research methods courses.
Melissa previously taught adult literacy and English as a second language in
the United States for over 15 years in both non-formal and university
settings. Her research focuses on language and literacy education in migration
contexts and employs critical participatory methodology to examine issues of
equity and access for linguistically and culturally diverse learners.

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