REVIEWS679 Papers in language variation: SAMLA-ADS collection. Edited by David L. Shores and Carole P. Hines. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1977. Pp. xiv, 321. $10.00. Reviewed by Walt Wolfram, University of the District of Columbia and Centerfor Applied Linguistics This volume consists of papers given originally at the South Atlantic section of the American Dialect Society meetings during a period from 1958-73, although the majority (18 of 29) were given during the early 1970's. Any hint from the title that these papers are concerned with recent developments in variation theory must be dismissed on the basis of a brief examination of the contents. For the most part, this collection is devoted to studies which have grown out of the tradition of dialect investigation found in linguistic atlas-type surveys, although a few studies indicate concessions to the quantitative dimensions found in social dialect research during the late 60's. According to Shores & Hines, the rationale for the anthology is 'to motivate further interest in the annual meeting' (p. ix); by their own admission , 'the unifying aspect ofthis volume is that all the papers originated at SAMLA' (South Atlantic Modern Language Association, where the South Atlantic section of the American Dialect Society normally holds its sessions). The motivation for the collection and the unifying theme as stated have the virtue of modesty, but they hardly justify another instant book. The papers are conveniently divided into three sections: (1) regional variation; (2) social variation; (3) language variation and use. As might be suspected, the section on regional variation is the one most solidly within the tradition of dialect geography, as established in projects like the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), and their various offshoots. The topics range from reports on isolated forms (such as W. Evans' 'You and thou in Northern England' and E. Stephenson's 'The beginning of the loss of postvocalic /r/ in North Carolina') to presentations on entire areas (such as G. Wood's 'Dialect contours in the southern states') and progress reports on current linguistic research projects (such as G. Rueter's ? dialect survey of rural Georgia: the progress' and F. Cassidy's 'What's new about DARE?') There is something quite dated about a 1977 publication which contains articles looking forward to the 'approaching bicentennial celebration' (p. 5) and a progress report given in 1968, even though we are assured that all the papers have been revised since the original oral presentations. 1 his, however, is a minor quibble; a more serious problem is that the majority of the articles in this section might well have been written three or four decades ago, given their linguistic framework for description. Reading some of the papers in this section gives one a nostalgic feeling; one can almost forget for a while that the debates of the past few decades about appropriate theories, models, and methods had ever occurred. In the section on social variation in language, focus ranges from a critique of some recent analyses of copula deletion and invariant be in Black English to a proposed plan of research on Tennessee English. While some concession is made in this section to methodological advances in social dialect research of the last decade, the papers still tend to avoid any serious interaction with current models 680LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) for describing language variation. This is not to deny that the content of some of these papers can make intriguing reading. The complex Charleston sociolinguistic situation, as described by R. O'Cain, is engrossing; and J. Brewer's investigation of subject concord of be in early Black English opens up an exciting new data source for some of the historical questions which have been raised in the study of Vernacular Black English, since it is based on interviews with ex-slaves collected as part of the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930's. But the general avoidance of current models for describing linguistic variation speaks to an orientation which is quite different from that of many modern investigations of dialect variation. If presentday concern with sociolinguistic models of variation holds any common ground with...