Reviewed by Colette van Kerckvoorde, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

The first edition of Pella Dutch appeared almost twenty-five years ago, and the work is now available as a paperback that has been expanded and revised. The new version contains an updated preface: here, Philip E. Webber not only focuses on the changes that have occurred in Pella since the original publication but also provides the reader with an extensive selected bibliography of works that have appeared since 1988.

Pella is a small community in Iowa, founded in 1847 by religious separatists from the Netherlands. Today the town boasts a population of approximately 8,000 inhabitants and remains proud of its Dutch heritage, as exemplified by an annual Tulip Time Festival and by a commitment to Dutch-style architecture. Most interesting, however, is the fact that there are still some speakers of Dutch in Pella, and a significant part of this work deals with the topic of the Pella Dutch dialect.

W set out to write a sociolinguistic investigation of Pella. His book is divided into three parts. Part 1 contains a general description and overview of the town’s inhabitants, their ancestors, and their place of origin in the Netherlands. Part 2 deals with the preservation of the town’s unique culture. Part 3 focuses on Pella Dutch language samples that W observed and analyzed. These samples were volunteered by forty percent of approximately 250 functional speakers whom W managed to locate and contact. As can be expected, the majority of Dutch speakers has retired and is among the older inhabitants of the town. Thus, it is clear that the Pella Dutch dialect is endangered.

In his treatment of the language, W concentrates on the tone of typical conversations, which he reports to be peppered with playful humor, folk wisdom, and proverbial observations. He indicates that visitors from the Netherlands quickly notice that the Dutch spoken here is quite different from Standard Dutch, and, at times, they may disparage the speakers’ language use. The author provides a comparison between Standard Dutch and the language spoken in Pella, describing some differences that he occasionally traces back to the dialect of the Gelderland region, where most of the early immigrants came from. In most cases, however, it is obvious that English influence accounts for a particular feature.

Although this book is sound and well researched, it was not written specifically for an audience with a background in language study and linguistics. As a result, the linguistic description may appear impressionistic to scholars of Dutch. The book, nevertheless, offers an interesting and lively report of the fate of an immigrant language and culture in the United States.

Reviewed by Sharon Utakis, Bronx Community College, CUNY

Katherine A. Stewart and Madeline M. Maxwell examine how participants in mediation co-construct dispute narratives. They argue that while their data support the idea that the bilateral adversarial narrative model is widespread, it is not the only pattern. They discuss alternative narrative patterns.

In the first chapter, the authors give an overview of the research and its purpose. They express that the study of interaction in the narrative construction of conflict talk is of value ‘to scholars of conflict talk and narrative, conflict management practitioners, and anyone who has been involved in a dispute’ (8).

Ch. 2, ‘Review of the literature’, focuses on ‘narrative as emergent within the interactive environment’ (11), ranging across a variety of models of narrative. In addition, the chapter touches on discursive mechanisms, positioning and identity, and the role of mediation and mediators.

Ch. 3, ‘Data and method’, briefly describes the methodology of the study. Five videotaped cases were selected from a corpus at a university conflict resolution center. Unfortunately, these are given somewhat flippant alliterative case names, such as ‘Dissertation Discord’ and ‘Ballroom Blunder’. The method of analysis focuses on conversation categories and attempts both micro- and macro-analytical approaches.

The features of adversarial narratives are further detailed in Ch. 4, ‘Communicative construction of adversarial narratives’. These narratives are identified as increasingly entrenched and positional, consisting of defenses of one’s own position and attacks on the other person’s position (concerning justice/injustice and responsibility/accountability). The authors review the literature on the adversarial narrative pattern, and then go through the five cases in detail, making extensive use of quotations from the narratives. In each case, they explicitly discuss why each case fits or does not fit the typical pattern of adversarial narratives, concluding that only three of the five cases are model examples of the pattern.

In Ch. 5, ‘Co-construction of alternative dispute narratives’, the authors focus on the two cases that do not fit the typical adversarial narrative pattern. In both cases, they conclude that these are examples of a unilateral adversarial narrative pattern, in which one party presents an adversarial narrative but the other attempts to co-create a new narrative to ‘bridge conflicts, preserve or restore relationships, and craft collaborative solutions’ (58). In this chapter, the authors also discuss the function of the mediators, who in some cases play the role of audience or introduce narrative themes not present in the narratives of the disputants.

Ch. 6 briefly summarizes the findings of the research, discusses future research directions, and mentions implications for mediation practice. The section on implications is frustratingly thin; although the authors argue in their introduction that the study of the narrative construction of conflict talk is of value to conflict management practitioners, they hesitate to draw any conclusions about what is effective or ineffective conflict management.

On the whole, however, the book convincingly argues that researchers should take another look at narratives in conflict and examine alternatives to the dominant model more closely.

Reviewed by Colette van Kerckvoorde, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

In recent years, many studies have concentrated on the development and the features of immigrant adolescent speech in large, northwestern urban areas of Europe. This particular book builds on said research and serves as a contribution to the investigation of multi-ethnic youth language in Amsterdam, focusing on data from conversations that include Moroccan, Turkish, and Dutch adolescents who grew up and still live in the Dutch capital. Based on an M.A. thesis that was submitted to the University of Amsterdam in 2009, Gerda H. Schokkin’s work has a narrow focus: she discusses the use of two discourse particles, maar and toch, in Moroccan Flavoured Dutch (MFD).

This book is divided into two sections. The first one is theoretical and aims to introduce the reader to the history of sociolinguistics, to explore concepts that are relevant to the study at hand, to highlight research on multi-ethnolects, and to discuss definitions and the use of discourse particles. The goals for the first part are ambitious, especially when one considers the length of this book, and at times the reader may be left with some unanswered questions. For example, the author introduces the terms straattaal and Murks (20) but does not immediately provide a clear definition for them. In addition, the discussion of the discourse particles that are at the center of the study is brief; the book is definitely written for native or near-native speakers of Dutch.

In the second part, S describes her main hypotheses concerning the use of the discourse particles maar and toch, her method of data-gathering and analysis, and then concentrates on her findings. She admits that the investigation of her data does not allow her to provide clear answers to her hypotheses, but in the process of her research, she uncovered some interesting facts, for example, that ja toch is completely absent from the speech of the Dutch participants, even though the expression occurs in the speech of Moroccan and Turkish participants.

Despite its values, this book is somewhat disappointing: sometimes it seems superficial, especially in that the history of sociolinguistics is described in a few pages. At other times, the reader feels that some background information is assumed, as exemplified earlier. This could easily have been avoided, particularly when one takes into consideration that the entire work is only about 100 pages long. As a result, I can recommend this study only to readers who have read prior material about MFD.

Reviewed by Colette van Kerckvoorde, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

It is impossible to miss the unusual format of this book. One notices a very brief preface, followed by one hundred dialogues, each of which is the same length: two pages, followed by a section entitled ‘Notes and solutions’, a list of references, and an index. While the use of dialogues is indeed surprising, it nevertheless works well to fulfill the author’s goals.

In the preface, the author explains what he wants to accomplish: first and foremost, he hopes to provide his readers with an awareness that they indeed possess a lot of intuitive knowledge about their native language, English, and that they often need only to reflect on and analyze their own use of the language if they want to uncover its grammatical rules and structures. This is evident to most students of linguistics. To a more general audience, however, this may not be obvious, and William Rutherford had this kind of reader in mind when he developed the concept for this book.

The main part of this work consists of twenty chapters, and each chapter contains five two-page Socratic dialogues that focus on a common topic related to language use. In these dialogues, Patrick, a student, makes observations about some of the linguistic features he encounters; and Marta, his mentor, assists him in thinking about these features, coaches him to find additional examples, and helps him to recognize regularly occurring patterns within the language. Linguistic terminology is introduced in each dialogue and is highlighted, by means of capital letters, to alert the reader to a new concept. The dialogues are well written and easy to follow, and they are available online as audio files. They can be read in order, as suggested by the sequence in which they occur, starting with ‘Day one’, but it is also possible to read the dialogues in random order. At the end of each chapter, there is a postscript: here, the reader is invited to reflect on or analyze some simple materials.

This work is entertaining and refreshing. Any student who debates whether an introductory linguistics course might be useful could benefit from this work, as it is aimed at a general reader who is curious about language, but may expect a very different and more traditional approach. In addition, many language purists might enjoy this work. I can imagine that such readers may be puzzled at first but may become convinced by R’s approach. His approach provides the reader with an awareness that there is much more to language than what traditional English language education offers, and this work may encourage the reader to venture into more advanced linguistic material.

Reviewed by Kanavillil Rajagopalan, State University at Campinas

As announced in its very title, this book’s central thrust is to argue that scientific text is fundamentally and inescapably dialogic, although many academics tend to think they are engaged in a ‘one-man show’ or that what they produce is ‘a classic example of a monologic text’ (1). The idea itself is perhaps not an earth-shaking one, but the systematic manner in which Zohar Livnat conducts his discussion and endeavors to persuade the reader is by all means praiseworthy.

The book consists of six chapters. Leaving aside the introductory and the conclusive chapters, Chs. 2 through 5 carry the bulk of the argumentation in the book. Ch. 2, ‘Approaches to dialogicity’, is mostly exploratory and lays down the basic theoretical framework within which the author wants to conduct his discussion in the ensuing chapters. Themes such as dialogism, intertextuality, and voices in the text are examined in this chapter.

Ch. 3 looks at academic discourse as an exercise in persuasion. The persuasive goals are manifest in the very way research papers and articles are structured. L also argues that it is through the deft use of language that the researcher ‘present[s] his findings as “facts”’. (34). This in turn leads the author to posit ‘degrees of factivity’.

Ch. 4, ‘The dialogic dimension of academic discourse’, takes a closer look at dialogicity at work in academic discourse. This is the longest chapter in the book, running a total of seventy-five pages. L focuses on the use of citations in academic writing and argues that there is a veritable ‘rhetoric of citations’ in presenting an academic paper that ideally ‘looks both backwards and forward’ (64). Also examined in this chapter is concession, which L considers to be ‘a syntactic and discursive structure, as well as a rhetorical strategy’ (66).

Ch. 5, ‘Scientific dialogicity in action’, is the second longest chapter, comprising seventy pages. L zeroes in on controversies that occasionally take place in academia and notes that ‘[t]he notion of dialogicity may take on a more transparent meaning when an actual scientific dispute is being explored’ (123).

This book is an important contribution to the endeavor of gaining a clearer understanding of academic writing. It will greatly benefit those outside the academic community who are generally awestruck by the great advances in science but know very little about the field’s actual workings. However, the book will also be immensely useful to newcomers, helping them in ways not available to them in the normal course of things.

The book is rounded off with a fairly extensive bibliography. In addition, an appendix contains a corpus of journal articles (all published in Hebrew) referred to in the chapters. The book also includes an author index and a subject index.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, University of Nizwa

This monograph containing twelve articles focuses on the effect of language contact, particularly through translation, on language variation and change. Bringing together insights from historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and translation studies, the book comprises three sections: the first two address diachronic perspectives considering both long-term and recent changes, and the third focuses on synchronic perspectives.

The first chapter outlines a typology for translation-induced language change, which serves as a framework for a subsequent analysis of Latin–Old Swedish language contact. It acknowledges the importance of sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic factors in translation-induced change and recognizes different linguistic manifestations of change.

The subsequent four chapters discuss aspects of historical language change involving Latin, French, English, and German. These include the role of translation in lexical innovation and grammatical constructions in English that reveal evidence of the influence of Latin/French in the genre of parliamentary rolls, which were written trilingually.

The following chapter examines particular stylistic changes with regard to the formulation of directives in German made by translators of French cookbooks published from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The author notes an increased level of formality in the formulations found in later texts which, according to the author, subsequently influenced the textual conventions of German cookbooks.

In the second section of the book, dedicated to investigations of recent linguistic changes, two studies consider the extent to which English lexico-grammatical features typical of a certain text type occur in German translations and in German parallel texts. The final chapter examines non-translated written discourse of bilingual speakers of Faroe and Danish for the transfer of communicative conventions.

Encompassing synchronic studies, the final section looks at how contact with English has induced lexico-grammatical or textual changes in particular text types in Japanese, German, Spanish, and the Salish languages. The discourse genres studied include corporate reports, newspapers, and oral language. Specifically, one study examines the use of personal pronouns as a variable to indicate the application of a ‘cultural filter’ in Japanese and English translated corporate reports. Another study investigates the infiltration of English lexico-grammatical features in a major United States–based Spanish newspaper and concludes that, contrary to expectations, it is not lexical items but the diffusion of particular morphosyntactic items typical of English that can be found in Spanish journalistic writing in the United States.

One study on oral language is included in this compilation. Looking at variations on the conventional verb-initial word order of Salish languages, the author refutes earlier claims that instances of subject-initial word order arose through language contact with English, postulating rather that this variation was pragmatically motivated.

This collection of corpus-based studies documents contact-induced lexico-grammatical and textual influence on a target language, in terms of either translation or discourse conventions in a second language with prestigious status within a given discourse community. Owing to the book’s strong empirical approach, the studies avoid the prescriptive and normative tendency common in the translation field. This book is a suitable companion to studies in translation and language variation at graduate level.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, University of Nizwa

This monograph of sixteen original papers is the product of workshop held at the University of Erlangen (Germany) in 2007, shortly after the death of John Sinclair. Comprising four sections, this book unites theoretical and applied studies on phraseology. The initial two chapters provide an insightful synthesis of Sinclair’s professional life and his contribution to linguistics. The subsequent sections focus on theoretical and pedagogical aspects of collocation studies, variation in phraseological language, and computational studies.

The second section comprises studies on Sinclair’s idiom principle. Several authors extend the original concept by distinguishing different types of idiomatic combinations. The first chapter introduces the term ‘probabeme’ to refer to combinations perceived as semantically transparent units of meaning but which involve an element of unpredictability in combination. The following chapter introduces the principle of creativity, in recognition of the semantic unpredictability of much descriptive language in the literary genre. Another chapter describes an analytical model to identify ‘second order collocations’, that is, the occurrence of combinations which depend on the presence or absence of other lexical items.

Other chapters in this section focus on pedagogical aspects of multiple-word combinations. Sylviane Granger provides a critical overview of the lexical approach, noting how the approach has developed over the decades to reach a relatively comfortable co-existence in the classroom with the grammatical syllabus and has led to a gradual lexicalization of language teaching materials. This is followed by observations on learning collocational chunks in a foreign language, and suggestions regarding lexicographical entries for such collocations. In the final chapter of this section, Nadja Nesselhauf compares variation in collocations and prepositional verbs in a corpus of texts of English as a second language (ESL) with results from English as a foreign language (EFL) and native language corpora; she finds numerous similarities in the variations used by ESL and EFL users.

Studies in the third section of the book focus on aspects of change. Christian Mair describes the use of spoken and written corpora to trace changes over time in morphosyntactic features of English and suggests that linguistic changes in spoken or written language may occur relatively autonomously. The following chapter focuses on variation in multi-word units in British and American dialects. Ute Römer investigates the phraseology of evaluative utterances in a book review corpus, ultimately concluding that both the phraseological structures and the meanings they express were particular to this genre. The section’s final chapter uses native speaker and EFL corpora to investigate the relation between the degree of collocational density and perceived level of difficulty of the texts. In the final section, Ulrich Heid’s corpus study of German verb-noun collocations concludes that besides morphosyntactic features, semantic, and pragmatic features of these multi-word units need to be considered.

The methodology used in many studies of these studies is not always straightforward, underscoring the fact that arriving at appropriate procedures to investigate phraseology still requires some inventiveness on behalf of the researcher. This text will be of great interest to graduate-level students of semantics, phraseology, and translation studies.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, University of Nizwa

This monograph of eight chapters is the result of collaborative research by the Wellington Language of the Workplace project, led by the coauthors. The book investigates the discourse of leadership in four New Zealand private sector workplaces, which reflect, either Maori or Pākehā (New Zealanders of European ethnic descent) cultural values and norms. Using the social constructionist framework, this discourse analysis study investigates the negotiation of meaning and the maintenance of social relationships through talk, using data compiled from observations of workplace meetings, interviews, and discussions. The main findings are discussed in Chs. 3–7. Each chapter contains numerous excerpts of workplace conversations or narratives from both Maori and Pākehā organizations, which illustrate but also contrast the discursive and social norms of these two ethnic communities.

Ch. 3 analyzes how leadership is constructed and enacted during various workplace communicative events and begins to introduce the discursive and relational aspects of leadership enactment that distinguish Pākehā from Maori norms. One such difference is the Maori tendency toward self-deprecation and the avoidance of self-promotional behavior. This is contrasted with a tendency displayed by New Zealander workplace leaders of European descent to assert their leadership role through self-oriented, self-promotional talk.

Ch. 4 examines the structure and interactional norms of workplace meetings. In Pākehā-dominant organizations, the opening and closing of meetings tends to be brief and informal. In Maori cultural environments, however, the opening of work meetings may follow traditional protocol, depending on the size and formality of the meeting. Interaction between the attendees may also contrast in the two cultural environments. Unlike the New Zealand European meeting norms in which overlapping speaker turns are avoided, according to Maori cultural practice, a degree of background meeting-related talk is appropriate during a speaker’s turn; this is interpreted as interest in (rather than disinterest in) issues raised by the speaker.

Ch. 5 looks at how leaders use relational talk to maintain and direct workplace relationships. The authors note that, while senior staff at both Pākehā- and Maori-run organizations make ample use of relational talk, in Maori cultural environments, such talk is more likely to encompass family-related topics. Maori leaders may more likely use relational talk as an indirect channel to convey particular messages to staff, and use humor to navigate potential conflict. Ch. 6 examines how leadership is shared in organizations through co-leadership roles. Ch. 7, devoted to an analysis of different styles of Maori leadership, discusses how Maori values increasingly influence social norms in Pākehā-dominated workplaces.

Suitable for graduate-level work, this very readable study contributes to the limited research available on the enactment of leadership by indigenous peoples.

Reviewed by Mikael Thompson, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

The title of this book is misleading, for it is written for an audience that has already been introduced to Old English: Cummings assumes his readers have already studied Old English morphology (3) and restricts himself to syntax. In fact, ‘The primary purpose of this book is to bring the Old English historical dialect into the purview of systemic functional linguistics’ (1). Thus, his treatment of syntax is highly condensed and serves to illustrate the principles of systemic functional grammar, the approach to language pioneered by M.K. Halliday.

Ch. 1 is a concise overview of systemic functional linguistics. In this view, language has three primary purposes underlying three distinct perspectives on language use: as a means of communicating shared experience of reality (the ideational perspective), as negotiating cooperative activity (the interpersonal perspective), and as objectifying itself (the textual perspective) (5–6). Each perspective structures part of the grammar of a language. Ch. 2 discusses the interpersonal perspective, in which each speech act is seen as an exchange: either an offer or a demand for either goods and services or information (34–36). Four fundamental moods are defined thereby, three of which are encoded distinctly in Old English by the order (if the elements occur) of the subject and the finite verb form.

Ch. 3 concerns the experiential perspective, one of the two major divisions of the ideational perspective. All events are classified into six broad types of processes with associated participants; this perspective, thus, underlies case, voice, and role. In Ch. 4, the means of linking units into longer units of text are introduced; the fundamental distinction is between theme and rheme. Ch. 5 treats the structure of groups and phrases (the difference appears to be that modifiers are obligatory in phrases, optional in groups), and Ch. 6 treats complexes, units made up of smaller units of the same class. Finally, Ch. 7 discusses cohesion (anaphora, pronouns, comparison, etc.) and metaphor.

This book will, of course, appeal to linguists who work in or are interested in systemic functional linguistics. It will also be worth reading by students of Old English who seek a more broadly philosophical approach than traditional grammar, and with less technical detail than other schools of linguistics. However, because of its concision and the prerequisite experience it assumes, its appeal to most general readers is likely to be small. It is not suited to serve as a textbook for Old English classes but should be useful extra reading for more advanced students, for it treats a number of issues in a coherent framework, such as the large-scale organization of text, that are less touched on in textbooks.

The dialects of Irish: Study of a changing landscape. By Raymond Hickey. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 230.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Pp. xi, 508. ISBN 9783110238044. $168 (Hb). Includes DVD.

Reviewed by David Elton Gay, Bloomington, IN

In the preface to The dialects of Irish: Study of a changing landscape, Raymond Hickey writes that his book is ‘intended as an overview of present-day dialects of the Irish language for both scholars and students who interested in Irish but do not necessarily have prior experience with the language’ (v).

Irish orthography is notoriously difficult, and thus those unfamiliar with it would do well to read Appendix 2, ‘The orthography of Irish’ (392–404), before reading the rest of the book. This appendix outlines how Irish orthography works, and though it does not remove all difficulty for the newcomer, it will help the newcomer make sense of what seems to be a chaotic orthography.

The book is divided into four parts, with each part divided into further subsections for specific topics. Part 1 (1–26) is a general survey of modern Irish—who speaks it, with whom, when, and how many people now speak Irish. Part 2 (27–104) is a survey of the sound system of Irish. Here H notes that his ‘aim is to make general statements about the dialects of Irish and hence demonstrate overall phonetic patterning across the varieties of the language’ (32).

Part 3 (105–384) is a survey of the dialects themselves. The first subsection in Part 3 examines the decline of the Irish language, the problem of reconstructing the historical distribution of Irish dialects, and the formation of the dialects. This is followed by a brief subsection on the data collection for this book. There is a long subsection on the phonology of the dialects, followed by subsections on grammatical and lexical differences. The fourth subsection covers the prosody of the dialects; the fifth, reconstruction of the dialects; and the final subsection is on the sociolinguistics of the dialects.

Part 4 of the book (385–430) is composed of the appendixes. Subsections here include brief comments on the history of Irish; early studies of Irish (including the bardic tracts); early grammars of Irish; the orthography and transcription of Irish; and samples of spoken Irish, which include information on how to use the DVD that comes with the book. The book also has a very useful glossary as well as an excellent bibliography on Irish dialects.

There are a few misprints in the book, though I only noted one of significance: in example 25 (78), the pronoun sé/sí (he/she) is used in all four sample sentences, but the transcription and translation make it clear that in each of the second sample sentences sé/sí should read muid (we) instead.

The dialects of Irish: Study of a changing landscape is an excellent survey of modern Irish dialects. It will, in fact, become the standard account of the dialects of modern Irish; and it is, in general, accessible to those who do not know Irish.