Language, Ethnicity and Race Reader

[Margaret Ronkin]

I'm generally a fan of Rampton and this looks like an enticing and varied volume if one does not wish to deal with all the work of ereserves, a coursepak, etc. However, I don't agree that it includes THE key readings on language, ethnicity, and race (see the claim below). I would and have included M. Morgan and S. Brice-Heath, for example, in an intro course for undergraduates. If I ever teach this material again, I'll also look at J. Baugh's work closely (and perhaps design a unit on language, "race", and social activism). Even some of THE key authors are not represented as well and currently as they might be, J. Gumperz, J. Hill, and J. Rickford, for example. I'm not a Native Americanist, but I also recall G. Witherspoon's Language and Art in the Navajo Universe as one of the key reads of my early education. Under colonialism, imperialism, and global processes, there of course is D. Lelyveld's brilliant work on Urdu and Hindi language controversies and S. Ramaswamy's on mu!
 ltiple imaginings of Tamil, stuff that upper-level undergraduates can handle and that may be even more interesting to student audiences in the UK than to their counterparts in the USA. Compilers of edited volumes probably never come up with what they consider close to ideal, so my beef here is really with the hype with which the volume is marketed.

--Maggie Ronkin
=========

Contents:
Contents: General
Introduction. Part I: Colonialism, Imperialism and Global Process 1. Otto
Jespersen (1922): The Origin of Speech 2. Edward Sapir (1921): Language,
Race and Culture 3. Bill Ashcroft (2001): Language and Race 4. Mervyn
Alleyne (1989): Language 5. Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1986): The Language of
African Literature 6. Alamin Mazrui (1997): The World Bank, the Language
Question and the Future of African Education 7. Randolph Quirk (1990):
Language Varieties and Standard Language 8. Ben Rampton (1990): Displacing
the Native Speaker: Expertise, Affiliation and Inheritance Part II:
Nation-states and Minorities 9. Joshua Fishman (1972): The Impact of
Nationalism on Language Planning 10. Michael Billig (1995): Banal
Nationalism 11. Ray Honeyford (1988): The Language Issue 12. John Rickford
(1997): Suite for Ebony and Phonics 13. Wendy Bockhorst-Heng (1998):
Singapore's 'Speak Mandarin' Campaign: Language Ideological Debates and
the Imagining of a Nation 14. Roger Hewitt (1992): Language, Youth and the
Destabilization of Ethnicity 15. Jane Hill (1995): Junk Spanish, Covert
Racism, and the (Leaky) Boundary between Public and Private Spheres 16.
Jacqueline Urla (1995): Outlaw Language: Creating Alternative Public
Spheres in Basque Free Radio 17. Monica Heller (1999): Alternative
Ideologies of La Francophonie Part III: Language, Discourse and Ethnic
Style 18. Benjamin Lee Whorf (c. 1936): An American Indian Model of the
Universe 19. Susan U. Philips (1972): Participant Structures and
Communicative Competence: Warm Springs Children in Community and Classroom
20. John Gumperz (1979): Cross-Cultural Communication 21. Ray McDermott
and Kenneth Gospodinoff (1979): Social Contexts for Ethnic Borders and
School Failure 22. John Gumperz and Eduardo Hernández-Chavez (1972):
Bilingual Codeswitching 23. John T. Clark (2003): Abstract Inquiry and the
Patrolling of Black/White Borders through Linguistic Stylization 24.
Cecilia Cutler (1999): Yorkville Crossing: White Teens, Hip Hop and
African American English 25. Les Back (1995): X Amount of Sat Siri Akal!:
Apache Indian, Reggae Music and Intermezzo Culture. Index

--------