Language, ethnicity and intergroup relations Edited by Howard Giles (review)

Abstract

442LANGUAGE, VOLUME 56, NUMBER 2 (1980) This volume, which is not a book and does not really deal either with linguistics or with 'language theory in a Japanese context', would not deserve notice in a scholarly journal were it not for its title, and for the name and reputation of its publisher. The only useful purpose a review can serve is to warn those who might see the title listed in a bookseller's catalog and be tempted to buy it sight unseen. If the University of Tokyo Press plans to publish more books (or even more nonbooks ) written in difficult foreign languages not commonly or easily read by Japanese scholars, e.g. English, then it surely should consider instituting some sort of review process for manuscripts submitted to it. If specialists who know something of the subject matter, and who can also read the language in which a given manuscript is written, were to be consulted before the fact, it surely would be possible in the future to avoid the embarrassment to the Press and its University, as well as the waste of time and money on the part of the unwary reader abroad, that is represented by the publication of a shoddy pastiche ofthis sort. If the manuscript for this volume had been submitted for such review, a pre-publication reader would surely have noted, as early as p. 7, that N misglosses, and misunderstands, gengogaku as meaning 'study of languages'. For anyone undertaking to write about 'language theory in a Japanese context', a minimum qualification should probably be the ability to recognize the Japanese word for 'linguistics'. [Received 21 May 1979.] Language, ethnicity and intergroup relations. Edited by Howard Giles. (European monographs in social psychology, 13.) London: Academic Press, 1977. Pp. xiii, 370. £14.50. Reviewed by Carol Myers Scotton, Michigan State University The use of language as a tool to negotiate an ethnic group's identity, as well as the perception of language-use patterns as indices of the potency or specific estimation of the group's status in the larger society, are the main subjects of this collection. An 'Introductory essay' (1-14) by Giles states his aim for the volume: to deal with language specifically as an element in the dynamics of inter-ethnic group relations, rather than only with the relationship of language and ethnicity. The first article, J. A. Fishman's 'Language and ethnicity' (15-57), provides a background for understanding the potential salience ofethnicity in any interaction. His over-all thesis is that one must first be familiar with the nature, mutability, and manipulability of ethnicity before attempting to understand its recurring link with language. To this purpose, F provides a general exposition of ethnicity. The article is meaty, and his interpretations could be taken as an interrelated set of hypotheses which ultimately need to be tested. F presents a masterful exposition of the necessity to view ethnicity as an abstract, multidimensional construct; but at the same time, he is proposing that one dimension, paternity, be considered central. Although he allows for the acquisition of ethnicity or its loss ' involving unusual circumstances' (17), and although he deals with other dimensions of ethnicity, it is the 'bio-kinship' dimension (paternity) which F sees as the main component of ethnic identity and endurance. REVIEWS443 Patrimony, ihe behavioral counterpart to paternity, is the second major dimension of ethnicity for F; it relates to 'how ethnic collectivities behave and to what their members do in order to express their membership' (20). Phenomenology is the third major dimension which F identifies: this is 'the meanings that [the actor] attaches to his descent-related being and behaving' (23). F's other major premises deal with 'enactments' of ethnicity—e.g. the role of boundaries in defining ethnic groups, the possibility of change in what defines a specific group, and the manipulability of ethnicity. F says that, while boundaries may mark ethnic groups, they are relatively unimportant elements in terms of what constitutes the heart of the construct. The idea that ethnicity is subject to radical change is somewhat inimical to F's basic stance that it ultimately denotes irreducibility. He does say, however, that change clearly occurs...