17.1512, Review: Socioling/Textbooks: Wardhaugh (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1512. Tue May 16 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.1512, Review: Socioling/Textbooks: Wardhaugh (2005)

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1)
Date: 11-May-2006
From: Brian Chan < bhschan at umac.mo >
Subject: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Fifth Edition 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 17:42:06
From: Brian Chan < bhschan at umac.mo >
Subject: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Fifth Edition 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 17:42:07
From: Brian Chan < bhschan at umac.mo >
Subject: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Fifth Edition 
 

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-3571.html 

AUTHOR: Wardhaugh, Ronald
TITLE: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
SUBTITLE: Fifth Edition
SERIES: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
YEAR: 2005
PUBLISHER: Blackwell Publishing

Brian Chan, Department of English, University of Macau

SUMMARY

In its fifth edition, this textbook has proved itself to be a popular one in 
a competitive field (with alternatives including Holmes 2nd edition 
(2001), Mesthrie et al. (2000), Romaine (2000), among others). As in 
the fourth edition, the main content is divided into four parts plus an 
introductory chapter (chapter 1) and a brief conclusion (chapter 16). 
[The fourth edition is reviewed in 
http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-357.html -- Eds.]

The introductory chapter 1 sets the scene by outlining the two major 
approaches to linguistics--- the Chomskyan one in which language is 
seen as an autonomous system of knowledge---and the sociolinguists' 
view---which sees language as intertwined with society to the extent 
that any explanation of the former would be virtually incomplete 
without some reference to the latter. The scope and the methodology 
of sociolinguistics are briefly introduced.

Part I (''Languages and Communities'') covers chapters 2 to 5, dealing 
with core concepts that are related to ''language'' in one way or the 
other. Chapter 2 (''Languages, Dialects and Varieties'') reviews 
definitions of ''language'' alongside with those of similar concepts 
including ''dialects'' (social and regional), ''varieties'' (mainly 
standardized), ''styles'' and ''register''. Chapter 3 (''Pidgins and 
creoles'') describes the origins, areal occurrences and linguistic 
properties of these ''languages'' which have been marginalized in 
mainstream linguistics. Chapter 4 (''Codes'') is actually about 
bilingualism. Bilingual and multilingual communities are exemplified 
and portrayed. Diglossia in Ferguson's classical sense is discussed, 
and code-switching is treated essentially as a result of different ''code-
choice'' which signals accommodation, change of communicative 
situation (e.g. topic change) or social identity. Chapter 5 (''Speech 
Communities'') reports definitions of ''speech community'' and their 
problems, followed by an introduction of more recent notions 
of ''community of practice'', ''social network'' and ''speech repertoire''.

Part II (''Inherent Variety'') deals with the ''core'' topic of sociolinguistics-
--language variation. Chapter 6 (''Language Variation'') elaborates on 
regional variation with examples including the Rhenish Fan and 
isoglosses in Southern Britain. This is followed by an introduction to 
the ''linguistic variable'' and other techniques and methodologies used 
in variationist studies. Chapter 7 (''Some Findings and Issues'') 
reviews the key findings of classic papers by Labov (the New York 
City studies), Trudgill (on Norwich and Reading), Wolfram (on Detroit), 
the Milroys (on Belfast) and others. Chapter 8 (''Change'') discusses 
various case studies of language change (e.g. Northern Cities Shift of 
vowels, The Martha's Vineyard, etc.) in the light of Labov's ideas 
(change from above vs change from below) and the lexical 
diffusion/wave theory of change.

Part III (''Words at Work'') covers chapter 9 to chapter 12, looking at 
how culture and context may affect language. Chapter 9 (''Words and 
Culture'') introduces The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Or The Whorfian 
Hypothesis/Language Relativity Hypothesis) and the arguments that 
have been put forward to support or refute it. Examples are then given 
to illustrate areas in which languages reflect (and are possibly 
conditioned by) different cultures in imposing different classifications 
of objects or experience, namely, kinship terms and color terms. The 
key idea in Chapter 10 (''Ethnolographies'') is that people 
communicate in different ways in different cultures; for instance, they 
may have different uses and meanings for silence. The SPEAKING 
framework of Hymes is then discussed as a systematic way to analyze 
contextual factors which shape different varieties of talk. In addition, 
there are rules or conventions on how people understand and interact 
with each other in everyday life, and yet they are not always 
conscious of them. These rules are the object of study 
under ''ethnomethodology''. Chapter 11 (''Solidarity and Politeness'') 
focuses on how a message, in the same situation, may have been 
packaged in different ways in relation to the hearer. The idea is 
illustrated by examples such as the T/V distinction in French pronouns 
and, the Javanese honorifics and the address terms in different 
languages. Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness is then 
introduced. Chapter 12 (''Talk and Action'') surveys central topics in 
pragmatics including ''speech acts'' and Grice's ''co-operative 
principle'' and ''conversational maxims''. The structure of conversation 
is then discussed in the light of Conversation Analysis (Sacks, 
Schegloff, etc.). 

Part IV (''Understanding and Intervening'') ranges from chapter 13 to 
chapter 15. Chapter 13 (''Gender'') addresses language and gender, 
reporting research findings which suggest different ways the genders 
may talk and objections to these findings. Chapter 14 
(''Disadvantage'') is really about language and education, outlining 
Basil Bernstein's theory of Elaborate Code/Restricted Code, and 
introducing the debate about the use of African American Vernacular 
English (AAVE) in schools. Chapter 15, (''Planning'') introduces 
various goals, methods and underlying ideologies of language 
planning. Again, there is no shortage of case studies ranging from the 
revival of Catalan in Spain to the simplification of Chinese characters 
across the continent. It is then noted that some languages (e.g. 
English, Mandarin Chinese, etc.) became more dominant as a result of 
language planning and other factors at the expense of other minority 
languages, against the wishes of most linguists who would prefer to 
see more linguistic diversity or linguistic pluralism maintained in our 
world. 

The conclusion (chapter 16) does not exactly summarize the huge 
content of the book but highlights the importance of ''pluralism'' in 
sociolinguistics. The author sees no need to establish a doctrine in 
sociolinguistics; rather, he thinks that various theories, methodologies 
and approaches would only do justice to the complexity of issues and 
data that are involved.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

These are the two (related) areas I would like to address in this part; 
firstly, how well the book fares as a textbook for students and 
instructors, and secondly, how far the book succeeds as an update of 
sociolinguistics for an average reader, most probably (socio-)linguists.

This book targets itself as a first-level textbook for students with little 
previous knowledge of linguistics, sociolinguistics or anthropology 
(preface). Obviously, this is no easy task, since, as the author 
suggests in the conclusion, sociolinguistics involves many complex 
issues that have been studied in different approaches with various 
methodologies. There does not seem to be a unified theory which 
accounts for the full range of data, nor is it desirable to have 
a ''sociolinguistic doctrine''. In fact, the sociolinguistic approach, 
namely, the consideration of society, culture and context in the study 
of language, is shared with pragmatics, discourse analysis and 
anthropological linguistics, subjects which overlap with sociolinguistics 
but which can be seen as branches of linguistics in their own right. 
What's worse, many topics cut across each other; for instance, the 
issue of gender comes up in the more macro variationist studies and 
the micro conversation analysis as well. One could easily imagine how 
daunting it would be to write an informative and yet lucid, easy-to-
follow introductory textbook on this enormous subject. How does an 
author select the materials? How could he organize the topics? How 
could he strike a balance between detail and conciseness or between 
depth and width? These are all formidable challenges.

In this connection, the main strength of the book lies in its 
comprehensive coverage of sociolinguistic literature in discussion. The 
book is also resourceful. As in previous editions, each chapter is 
wrapped up with a wealth of discussion questions and a section of 
further readings. While the former provides the instructor with 
excellent materials for brainstorming, class discussion or follow-up 
assignments (of course, there is not always enough time covering all 
of these questions), the latter encourages the serious reader 
(instructor or student) to explore the issues further on his/her own. 
The selection of materials is laudable: there is a fair representation of 
studies---old and new---which discuss sociolinguistic phenomena 
drawn from different parts of the world and which involve a wide range 
of typologically different languages. It is noteworthy that the author 
has brought in a number of studies in 2000's. Despite the abundance 
of examples and illustrations, the discussion is never too long. The 
depth of explanation just right for students or those unfamiliar with the 
subject, often sprinkled with insights, and the language is very clear. 
All these are hallmarks of a good textbook written by an expert and 
fruits of an experienced teacher. The book most probably carries the 
teaching materials that the author has used, enriched and updated 
throughout the years (preface).

Whereas I find this textbook suitable for advanced undergraduates 
and postgraduates in a one-year (two-semester) course, I have 
reservations about using it in a one-semester BA or MA course. There 
is perhaps too much material to cover, as a trade-off to its 
comprehensiveness. In such circumstances, while I would still ask my 
students to read relevant chapters in this book or Holmes (2001) as 
supplements, I may well prefer Romaine (2001) for undergraduates 
and Mesthrie et al. (2000) for beginning postgraduates (e.g. MA). 
Alternatively, I would select chapters 1 and 2, Part II (''Inherent 
Variety'') and Part IV (Understanding and Intervening) in the 
curriculum. Chapter 3 (''Pidgins and Creoles'') and chapter 4 (''Codes'') 
are perhaps covered in another course focusing on language contact 
or bilingualism, while Part III (''Words at Work'') may well be used (as 
background reference) in another course on pragmatics and 
discourse, or language and culture. As for chapter 5 (''Speech 
Communities''), its key ideas may well be incorporated in the 
discussion of language variation (Part III).

Usually teaching a one-semester course and with other 
colleagues/courses dealing with pragmatics, discourse and 
bilingualism, I have been wondering whether there is a more direct or 
succinct way to organize the diverse topics under sociolinguistics. It 
appears to me that one such way is to focus on language variation, 
and have each chapter pinpoint one factor that may have caused or 
that is correlated with variation (language and class, language and 
time (i.e. language change), language and place (i.e. dialects), 
language and power, language and identity, language and gender, 
language and ethnicity, and so forth), to be followed by broader 
or ''applied'' issues such as language and education, language 
planning and bilingualism, a scheme that has been followed roughly in 
Mesthrie et al. (2000) and Thomas and Wareing (2003).  Pragmatics, 
discourse and language and culture may be covered in three separate 
introductory chapters, since they are now considered to be ''full-
fledged'' fields on their own. Of course, in doing so, the 
interconnections of various factors (age, gender, class, etc.) attested 
in variation studies may be blurred, but I guess this problem can be 
solved by more explanation in different chapters. An additional 
advantage of this scheme, I think, is that some recently popular topics 
can be covered in a rather straightforward way, such as language and 
power (Critical Discourse Analysis) and perhaps language and the 
media. Now, it seems that these topics can hardly find their 
appropriate place under the present framework.

This is not to say the book is not well-organized: It is clear that the 
author somehow proceeds from the ''macro'' issues (Part I and Part II) 
to ''micro'' ones (Part III), to be followed by more ''applied'' issues (Part 
IV). One may be a bit surprised to find Gender (chapter 13) located in 
Part IV. The author's rationale seems to be that many people think of 
language as ''sexist'' and call for ''intervention'' to get rid of these 
elements. It seems to me, however, that these calls have somewhat 
diminished in the past few years.

This fifth edition (2006) appears only four years after the fourth 
(2002). It is understandable that the author would like to update the 
materials so as to reflect the current developments in the field in the 
past few years (preface), and the readers (students or instructors) 
would reasonably expect that. How far does the book succeed in this 
respect?

As suggested above, there is a clear attempt to incorporate new 
references (i.e. after 2000's) into the existing framework, which is 
welcome. It is also commendable that some more recent developments 
are introduced, for instance, Estuary English (chapter 1) and queer 
linguistics (chapter 13). Nonetheless, some topics which are touched 
on briefly could have received more detailed treatment owing to their 
emerging popularity in the past few years, for instance, World 
Englishes (chapter 15), conversational code-switching (in which 
bilinguals switch codes frequently in the same situation) and the 
conversation-analytic approach of it (chapter 4) and language and 
power (chapter 14 -- although Fairclough is quoted here and there). 
Perhaps some readers would like to find mention that 
many ''sociolinguistic'' topics have more recently been studied in a 
more ''formal'', ''Chomskyan'' perspective, such as language change, 
language variation, pidgins and creoles and code-switching. 

The author emphasized the significance of identity in understanding 
sociolinguistics (preface, also see the blurb), but, after reading the 
book, it does not seem obvious to me how identity (or various 
identities) may have shaped one's language behaviour or language 
attitudes, or how identity is a crucial explanation of sociolinguistic facts 
or data. Some discussion of identity can be found in chapter 4 and 
chapter 5, though. 

To conclude, I think the book has done a fairly good job in meeting the 
serious challenge of writing a sociolinguistics textbook, though it may 
not have covered everything that has become popular in recent 
literature. In any case, I find this book comprehensive and well-written 
on the whole, and I believe it will continue to be a very useful 
reference in the field.

REFERENCES

Holmes, Janet (2001) An introduction to Sociolinguistics. Pearson 
Education Limited. Second edition.

Mesthrie, Rajand, Joan Swann, Andrea Deumert, and William L. Leap 
(2000) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press.

Romaine, Suzanne (2001) Language in Society. Oxford University 
Press. Second edition.

Thomas, Linda et al. (2003) Language, Society and Power: An 
Introduction. Routledge. Second edition.

Wardhaugh, Ronald (2002) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. 
Blackwell. Fourth edition. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER


Brian Chan is an Assistant Professor in Department of English, Faculty 
of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Macau. He has been 
teaching linguistics and bilingualism, and his research interest is in all 
aspects of code-switching (i.e. sociolinguistic, pragmatic and syntactic).





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