Audience Choice Research Articles

Foundations of linguistics By Dieter Wunderlich (review)

444LANGUAGE, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 2 (1982) Foundations of linguistics. By Dieter Wunderlich. Translated from the German by Roger Lass. (Cambridge studies in linguistics, 22.) Cambridge: University Press, 1979. Pp. xvi, 360. Cloth $49.50, paper $13.95. [Original version published by Ronwohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1974.] Reviewed by Jens Allwood, University of Göteborg, and Osten Dahl, University of Stockholm In this English version of Wunderlich's book, a few passages have been omitted, a number of errors have been corrected, and the bibliography has been updated. According to Ws foreword (p. xi), the book 'is an attempt to outline the foundations ofa science', viz. linguistics. It consists ofthe following eleven chapters: 1, 'Introduction'; 2, 'Knowledge and argument'; 3, 'Perception , description and explanation'; 4, 'Abstraction and deduction'; 5, 'The development of deductive argument: Logic'; 6, 'The use of deductive arguments in empirical science: Theories'; 7, 'Explication'; 8, 'On the explication of the concept "Grammatical in language L'"; 9, On the explication of the concept of meaning'; 10, 'Systematic operations'; and 11, 'Language-families and grammar-families'. The main question that W sets out to answer is: 'What presuppositions (in terms of philosophy/theory of science and methodology) do we need in order to argue for or against particular scientific positions in the field?' Thus he says that his book 'is not so much an introduction to particular linguistic theories and methods as a general introduction to linguistic inquiry and its characteristic modes of thought and argument' (xii). Basically, writing such a 'Wissenschaftstheorie der Linguistik' seems quite a good idea. We are less convinced, though, that the way W has chosen to realize his aim is the best one. In our opinion, W gives neither a very clear picture of the general methodological background nor very illuminating examples from linguistic practice. In several chapters, such examples are especially scarce (e.g. Chap. 6, where two-thirds of a page is all we get of linguistic applications). Another difficulty in writing a book of this kind is the choice of audience. In spite of W's declaration that he is aiming at students who have completed at least an introductory course in linguistics (xii), we find that many parts of the book, in particular its introductory sections, presuppose too much to serve as anything but a reminder for those who already know. Also, the jumps between rather elementary expositions of theories and rather advanced critical comments on these theories do not enhance the readability of the book, however valuable the latter may be to those who understand them. A further problem concerns the delimitation of what should be treated in the book. As can be seen from the chapter headings, W wants to offer a sort of smorgasbord of topics. Anyone who writes a book of this kind faces the dilemma of ending up either with a list of topics, held together mainly by the author's perseverance or, at the other extreme, with an integrated set of topics which is too small and biased to provide the desired coverage. The ideal is, of course, to fall somewhere in the middle: a set of well-chosen topics, the interrelations of which are clearly presented, discussed, and analysed. W's REVIEWS445 book can be said to be too close to the first extreme; it would have gained from the exclusion of some areas and a more careful integration of others. We shall let what has been said thus far suffice as a general characterization of the book, and proceed to more detailed criticisms. To start with, consider Ws use ofthe central term 'knowledge' . On p. 19, he says: 'Knowledge is what has already proven itself to be relatively justified, theories have yet to be justified.' This use of 'knowledge' and 'theory' is not quite standard: information which is counted as knowledge is usually taken to be justified without qualifications—and furthermore true. Similarly, the difference between a hypothesis and a theoretical statement is that the latter is justified, whereas the former need not be. A theory then, as a system of justified statements, already has justification. W also says on p. 19 that knowledge is independent (or invariant) with respect to the forms...

Is There Poetry in Children's Poetry?

Is There Poetry in Children's Poetry? Janice M. Bogstad (bio) In his brief comments on children and modern American culture which make up part of chapter 2 of False Promises (McGraw-Hill, 1973), Stanley Aronowitz divides children's cultural experience into two worlds. The first is an overt one, in which the child is raised through institutions and socialized to structures of ownership and domination. In the second, more covert world, the child's desires are followed through self-structured play. This latter is experienced by the child as pleasurable but non-essential, the part of the child's make-up that institutions try to purge from his or her memory. In reading some recent books of children's poetry, I asked myself several questions related to Aronowitz's idea: Which of his two worlds did the poetry in these books call to mind? Which group of class expectations do they represent? What group expectations do they implicitly reflect as choice of audience? How do they relate to the larger world of all children's experiences? How do they stand up as poetry? Do they oversimplifiy or condescend unduly to the child reader? Are they didactic or unpoetic? How do they compare to other children's or adults' poetry? How do children like them? The most positive of the six books of poetry under consideration here, with regard to all my initial questions, is called Lullaby (Harper & Row, 1980). It is a print adaptation of Faith Hubley's film Step by Step and contains a small record of the international lullaby constructed and charmingly illustrated by her. Words for the lullaby were written by Elizabeth Swados and they are also sung by her. Containing less than 75 short lines of text, the book speaks to the very young child, verbalizing in non-sense sounds, as well as in words, the private human relationship between child and parents. [End Page 83] You wanted meSo here I amYABABABAO YABABAM is illustrated with a mother, father and child of African or South American origin. Learn says the wind1 sing only for youTOO LOO TOO LOO TOO LOOOOOO captions an illustration of an Andean mother wearing a bright purple serape with a child on her back. The book does not attempt to mimic adult poetry or oversimplify or didactically intrude into the child's world. In fact, it assumes that a child has not developed expectations for poetry and can thus simply enjoy it for sounds and references to her or his hopes and thoughts. Nor does it avoid the fears of the young child. "If I sleep forever, who will wake me? A HAH HUM MM MM O YAH HAW OOO." Though the major portion of the text is in English, the book's pictures and nonsense sounds address children of many cultures. It is a work for parents and their young children to read together. Aileen Fisher is responsible for two very different selections. Anybody Home? illustrated by Susan Bonners (Crowell, 1980) is actually just one poem with irregular rhythm and end rhymes, while Out in the Dark and Daylight illustrated by Gail Owens (Harper & Row, 1980) is a collection of over 125 short poems which concern the everyday life of children who have access to a natural environment. As is often the case with books for very young readers (4-7 and 5-10, respectively) both of these carry on a narrative in part through pictures that accompany the poetry. Anybody Home? is more illustration than text, and Bonners' illustrations are delightfully descriptive. The subject of the poem is the homes of creatures such as squirrels, badgers, raccoons, and other mammals. Illustrations, corresponding to the lines of poetry, [End Page 84] show a young girl visiting these homes. I'd like to see,near the top of a treea house made of leaveswith rounded eaves,where a squirrel might beasleep in his clothes,with his tail for a blanketacross his nose. In this particular example, each set of four lines is the occasion for a full-page drawing, the first of a girl climbing the tree to see her squirrel's house...

The Famine in American Mass-Communications Research: Comments on Hirsch, Tuchman, and Gecas

Once upon a time, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, mass communications was a vital and productive field in academic sociological research, but ever since then it has suffered from a drastic famine which shows no signs of abating. Before commenting on the three preceding articles, I want to try to suggest briefly what research is most urgently needed and then discuss some of the reasons for the famine. If one looks at the mass media as institutions which deliver symbolic content to an audience, there are three major and interrelated areas of study: the institutions themselves, the content, and the audience. To begin with, we need to know how the mass media function as institutions and why they function as they do; how they determine content and what cultural and interest groups influence this determination, directly or indirectly; and how the media relate to their audiences in this process. With respect to content, we need to know what entertainment and information the media provide, and more generally, what they say about and to American society-what they tell Americans about themselves and what they leave out; how media content relates to the rest of American culture and to what extent it is-and creates-American culture. Audience studies ought to investigate not only what people read and see and how they perceive media content, but how they use it in their everyday lives; and what longand short-range effects the media and the content have on them and on society in general. And since audience feedback has some influence on media content, the effects of the media cannot be understood without taking into account the functioning of the media institutions and the role which past audience choices play in deternmining content and thus in helping to create the ultimate impact of the media. The studies I have suggested are needed not only by sociologists interested in understanding society, but also by those concerned with social policy for and about the media.