Linguistics, Language, and the Real World: Discourse and Beyond (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Linguistics, language, and the real world: Discourse and beyond ed. by Deborah Tannen, and James E. Alatis Chaoqun Xie Linguistics, language, and the real world: Discourse and beyond. Ed. by Deborah Tannen and James E. Alatis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. Pp. vi, 202. ISBN 0878409041. $39.95. More and more people have come to realize that language should not be studied in isolated contexts and that linguistics can and should be applied to address real-world problems. In other words, linguists with a social commitment should contribute to advancing human understanding of language in interaction. And this turns out to be one of the recurrent themes of Linguistics, language, and the real world. This collection of papers consists of eleven plenary addresses delivered at the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT) in 2001. In the introduction, Deborah Tannen presents an overview of the papers to follow. James E. Alatis then gives a brief account of the history of GURT. In ‘Some notes on the musicality of speech’, Frederick Erickson shows that certain cadential patterns can be found in naturally occurring talk. Wallace Chafe’s ‘Laughing while talking’ draws attention to laughter in natural discourse. Chafe’s analysis of laughter as ‘the expression of an emotion’ sounds a bit simplistic. For me, laughing does not necessarily express an emotion only and may, under certain circumstances, communicate two or more kinds of emotion at the same time. Deborah Tannen examines the conversational strategy of what she terms ‘ventriloquizing’ in the tape-recordings of family interaction, demonstrating that ventriloquizing and related strategies are ‘simultaneously power maneuvers and connection maneuvers’ (51). The next four contributions deal with narrative discourse. William Labov investigates a narrative told in a testimony before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, attempting to locate the event structure of discourse. Deborah Schiffrin argues that ‘linguistic analyses of oral histories … must attend to a multiplicity of functions, voices, and text/context relationships’ (88),suggesting that both linguists and historians may benefit from the analysis of oral history as discourse. Alessandro Duranti focuses on ‘The voice of the audience in contemporary American political discourse’, claiming that political candidates must be able to design both the script and the audience, with the objective of pleasing the audience while asserting themselves at the same time. In ‘Narrative in the construction of social and political identity’, Robin Tolmach Lakoff analyzes two news stories (O. J. Simpson’s story and the story of the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton) as narratives, arguing that ‘a functional component’ should be included in narrative analysis to better understand incivility and inequality lying beneath the competition for narrative rights in public discourse. The last three chapters are devoted to institutional discourse. Heidi E. Hamilton tackles medical discourse by examining patients’ accounts of noncompliance. Shirley Brice Heath discusses the ‘Discourse of denial’ used by policymakers and educators. Finally, G. Richard Tucker and Richard Donato report on the planning and implementation of a system-wide Spanish language program. [End Page 902] Written by distinguished researchers in the areas of discourse analysis and anthropological linguistics, this cutting-edge volume covers a variety of discourse genres in private and public domains and opens up new areas of research into discourse analysis. Those with a keen interest in language in society will find this book of much value. Chaoqun Xie Fujian Normal University Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America