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Rajagopalan; Sinfree Makoni

When all is said and done, Shohamy’s active intervention into the world
of language policy can be seen as making a powerful plea for a conceptual
overhaul in the whole field. Here is an excerpt testifying to her condemnation
of the way many applied linguists have customarily gone about their business:

They are often detached from the social and political roles of the material
they work with. They rarely talk about the legitimacy of language fusions
and hybrids, or about languaging through other means and other
linguistic markers. (p. 160)

For Shohamy, “language is like life” and “it is therefore necessary for people
to cherish language and guard against its enemies, those who want to lock it
in a closed box and manipulate it for their own needs, to encourage its use
as a free commodity and to protect it from misuse” (p. 173).
Shohamy opens on a moving note of a personal bereavement, which casts
a long shadow throughout the book. But, as difficult as it must no doubt have
been to undertake the task of “writing after a tragedy” (p. xiii), it is amply
clear to the attentive reader that the absentee figure of Orlee Shohamy –
“changing, evolving, weak at times, potent and powerful at others – merging
with experiences, transforming from these mergers and then detaching and
taking on a new meaning and form due to those mergers” (p. 173) – serves
as beacon light and a metaphor for the perennial flux called languaging as
well as the approach to language policy that such a view of the human
condition calls for.
The book is a must in the reading list of all those who believe that we
academics ought to pursue our vocation in the interests of the community at
large that, after all, helps sustain the institutions that host us. It is a wake-up
call to critical thinking and activism.

References

Canagarajah, A.S. (1999) Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford

University Press.
Shohamy, E. (2001) The power of tests: a critical perspective of the uses of language tests.
Singapore: Longman.

e-mail: rajan@iel.unicamp.br [Received March 11, 2007]

John Joseph, 2006, Language and Politics. Edinburgh University Press,

x + 170 pages, ISBN: 0 7486 2452 X (hbk), 0 7486 2453 8 (pbk)

Reviewed by Sinfree Makoni Pennsylvania State University

Language and Politics is one of a series of advanced textbooks in Applied

Linguistics published by Edinburgh University Press under the editorship of

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Alan Davies and Keith Mitchell beginning in 1999. In this review I will
address the following questions relating to John Joseph’s book as part of
the series and its contribution to the sociolinguistics of language and
politics:

1) In what way does it expand the tradition of textbooks on applied

linguistics that are part of the series?
2) How adequately has the book addressed issues relating to its specific
subject matter, i.e. language and politics?
3) Following from my interests as an Africanist, how does the book enhance
our understanding of the nature of language and politics outside Euro-
American contexts, particularly in Africa.

John Joseph’s book is made up of seven chapters. The first chapter is an

overview of the nature of politics and how it permeates language and vice-
versa. The chapter explores the political nature of a diverse range of
sociolinguistic phenomena, including ways in which language is constructed,
how people speak to each other, and the efforts to “discipline” or bring order
to language, an issue which has always been central to many language
activities, including language standardization (Milroy and Milroy 1993). For
Joseph, it appears that language is not a given – it is something which is
constructed from moment to moment, encounter to encounter in the daily
activities which make up life. The idea that language is contingent upon
social circumstances and individual and group histories has vast implications
for approaches which tend to regard language as pre-given and ordained
outside time and space, which was one of the defining tropes of structuralism
(Joseph 2006: 1; Blommaert 1999).
The second chapter critically analyses the nature of the relationship
between language and nation. It illustrates how language and nation are
mutually defining, thus moving away from Anderson’s (1991) conceptua-
lization in which it is the nation which is “imagined” through language,
and not vice versa. If language is not pre-given, as Joseph suggests in chapter
one, then this complicates the neat arrangement in which nations are
imagined through language and vice versa. He also expends time exploring
the role of writing and literacy in the emergence of notions about language.
The chapter concludes with a careful analysis of key issues which have
a bearing on how New Englishes are perceived, which in turn ostensibly
has a bearing on alleged falling standards (Kachru 1990, 1996). In chapter
three, Joseph comments about the social politics of language choice, correct-
ness and its complex relationship with prescriptivism, and description. He
does an in-depth analysis of the role of education in the development
of language, and the (still) contentious issue of linguistic imperialism. In
chapter four he describes various types of language varieties, including
gendered language, deferential address, powerless language, and the politics
of language change.

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In chapter five, Joseph deals with a topic that is pervasive in everyday

discourses about language usage but rarely encountered in academic
linguistics – i.e. swearing and hate speech (Cameron 1995). He explores
the implications of such genres of speech for the perennial issue of either
self- or government censorship. In chapter six he goes on to analyse how
nation-states endeavor to exercise control over their citizens’ thoughts, and
how they speak and communicate with government. In this chapter he
investigates the adequacy of power and hegemony as analytical frameworks
for understanding issues relating to language and politics.
In chapter seven, Joseph argues theoretically for the importance of
notions of agency in language studies. He argues that agency, albeit within
constraints, is compromised by both Chomskyan linguistics and Critical
Discourse Analysis. By depriving individuals of agency, language studies
fail to capture the complex ways in which individuals make decisions,
and choosing which languages to learn and how to speak them are some of
the frequently repeated but important choices people make in their daily
lives.
I now turn to the three questions which I posed at the beginning of the
review. The Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics series is, as the
editors suggest, meant to have a clear educational purpose (see Davies 1999);
unlike the other books in the series, this one does not contain a series of
exercises, but this does not in any way compromise the educational value of
the book. The series is to be used for advanced studies in applied linguistics,
reflecting the maturity of the discipline (see Davies and Elder 2004). If this is
one of the main purposes of the book, we can safely argue that Language and
Politics neatly fulfills this objective. The book is written in a clear and lucid
style which is readily accessible to most readers, including non-native speakers
of English like myself. The author blends academic prose with personal
narratives effectively drawn from his own life stories, for example: the
reactions of his colleagues on university committees to some candidates who
speak non-standard English during appointment interviews; the language
usage of his child; the impact of his dual American and Lebanese
background on his sense of self-identity and how people react to him. This
blending of an analytical approach with personal narratives enhances the
humanism in his writing, an approach congruent with his earlier writings
(e.g. Joseph 2004).
From an intellectual standpoint, Joseph takes a strong but, perhaps, rather
defensible position on his subject matter. He demonstrates quite elegantly
in his own words that “language is political from top to bottom” (p. 1),
thus challenging traditional views that language is only an abstract and
neural system which has very little to do with social and political factors.
He shows how notions about language and the way they are described,
i.e. ‘metalinguistics’ or what Bauman and Briggs (2003) felicitously call the
‘metadiscursive regimes’ about language, are themselves political and
have an impact on a wide range of issues, including language planning,

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standardization etc. If languages and the metadiscursive regimes are

political, then this challenges the refrain that language description is an
apolitical activity; such a view has implications for how we perceive
some of the popular activities in language studies in particular – structural
descriptions of languages and the writing of grammars.
To what extent is Joseph’s account applicable to African contexts, where
the political aspect of language not only involves the status African languages
might occupy in the socio-politics of a nation (official, national etc.) but
also how they are described? The metadiscursive regimes used to describe
African languages come via English and French. Arguably, African
languages are viewed through a lens which is European, forcing them
into pre-existing discursive regimes. Furthermore, the notion of describing
African languages evokes a sense of objective description which might
be misleading because it overlooks the extent to which the “tidying up” of
these languages is a consequence of the so-called description of African
languages.
If languages are political, how does the relationship between language
and politics play itself out in an African context, particularly in conflict-
ridden areas in “a peace averse international environment defined by the
war on terror” (Mamdani 2007)? Let us take Darfur in southern Sudan as
an example. There are a number of complimentary and conflicting senses of
what it means to be ‘Arab’ or ‘African’ in Darfur. ‘Arab’ may pejoratively
refer to an uncouth life-style. In this meaning, the individual may or may not
have Arabic as a primary language, and one could become ‘Arab’ through a
change in life-style. Such a definition differs from a regional one wherein
speaking Arabic as one’s primary language is central. A third meaning of
‘Arab’ is ‘privileged and exclusive’, and the linguistic criterion is secondary
if relevant at all. The question then is: are Arabs African, irrespective of
what language they speak? One meaning of ‘African’ is racial: ‘African’ is a
subcategory of being Black, although not everyone who is Black is African
and conversely not everyone who is African is Black. Another meaning of
‘African’ is linguistic and potentially exclusive – someone who speaks a
Bantu language. If we are conversant with the different meanings of ‘African’
and ‘Arab’ in a context like Sudan, then ‘Arab’ versus ‘African’ becomes
difficult to interpret and may not accurately reflect the complexities of the
situation. Thus, however well intentioned, military intervention may
aggravate rather than improve the situation.
If language and politics is to be relevant to Africa, it has to deal with such
“hot” topics. Any analytical template for African contexts has to place as
much or more significance on the discursive representations of politics as on
language itself. The thrust in such research will be on how discursive regimes
portray events and on the implications of such depictions for how
governments act.
I’d like to cite a further example which illustrates the significance of
introducing discourse analysis into the model of language and politics which

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Joseph is building in order for the model to be viable within African contexts.
A model which focuses on language and politics has to pay attention to the
foreign policy implications of the use of language and discourse by
governments, particularly when the discursive regimes may provide a partial
rationale for foreign interventions by governments. For example, there is a
major call for American intervention in Darfur by exactly the same people
calling for an American withdrawal from Iraq (Mamdani 2007). Discursively,
the violence in Darfur is described in terms of individuals, but the violence
in the Congo is described in terms of collectivities, groups, communities etc.,
erasing from view the individuality of the victims and thus attenuating the
gravity of their suffering. While the situation in Darfur is termed ‘genocide’,
that in the Congo is simply referred to by American policy-makers as
violence, even though more people have died in the Congo than Darfur. The
reason for such an intriguing situation is the fact that some of the people in
the Congo might be killed by American allies in the region, Rwanda and
Uganda. From an African perspective, it is not only an understanding of the
discourses of politics but also the histories behind the use of these discourses
which is crucial. It is the histories of the discourses of politics which are not
forcefully fore-grounded in Joseph’s book.
If Language and Politics is to resonate with the experiences of African
scholars both in Africa and its diaspora, the proposed model has to come to
terms not only with the language cum discourse and politics nexus but also
has to address discourses of multilingualism, endangerment etc. in Africa.
The key questions to pose in such cases are intellectual and materialistic.
Intellectually, the important questions to ask are: why are such discourses
regarded as important at this historical juncture; who are the beneficiaries of
the effects of such discourses; how are such discourses received not only by
those to whom the discourses are addressed but also by those who overhear
the conversation; how do such discourses interlock with other discourses; and
what claims are being made on behalf of such discourses? The materialistic
question is: who stands to benefit from discourses of multilingualism? All
these questions are relevant to an understanding of the nature of the nexus
between language and politics.
However, not withstanding such minor problems, those of us working on
language and politics can learn from Joseph’s book. For example, the overall
argument that language is political is consistent with our claim that
“languages, conceptions of languagueness and the metalanguages used to
describe them are political inventions” (Makoni and Pennycook 2006).
Joseph’s argument about the political nature of language is crucial to those
of us who increasingly feel that language should not be treated as if it has a
life of its own over and above human beings (Yngve 1996: 28). Joseph’s
argument about the nature of language points strongly towards a view
which regards human beings as central to language analysis and thus views
the systematicity of language as residing in people and not in language
(Hopper 1998).

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References

Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of

nationalism. London: Verso.
Bauman, R. and C. Brigs (2003) Voices of modernity: language ideologies and the politics
of its inequality. Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. (1999) Reconstructing the sociolinguistic image of Africa: grassroots
writing in Shaba (Congo). Text 19.2: 175–200.
Davies, A. (1999) Introducing applied linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.
— and C. Elder (2004) The handbook of applied linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cameron, D. (1995) Verbal hygiene. London: Routledge.
Kachru, B. (1990) World Englishes and applied linguistics. World Englishes 9: 3–20.
— (1996) The paradigms of marginality. World Englishes 15.1: 241–55.
Hopper, P. (1998) Emergent grammar. In M. Tomasello (ed.), The new psychology of
language. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 155–75.
Joseph, J. (2004) Language, and identity, national, ethnic, religious. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Makoni, S. and A. Pennycook (eds.) (2006) Disinventing and reconstituting languages.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Mamdani, M. (2007) The politics of naming: genocide, civil war, insurgency. London
Review of Books 29.5, 8 March 2007.
Milroy, J. and L. Milroy (1993) Real English: the grammar of English dialects in the British
Isles. London: Longman.
Yngve, V. (1996) From grammar to science: new foundations for general linguistics.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

e-mail: sbm12@psu.edu [Received March 15, 2007]

Mike Scott and Christopher Tribble, 2006, Textual Patterns: Key words
and corpus analysis in language education. Studies in Corpus
Linguistics 22. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 203 pages,
ISBN 978 90 272 2293 0 (hbk), 978 90 272 2294 7 (pbk)

Reviewed by Stig Johansson University of Oslo

In the last few decades there has been an astounding development in the use
of machine-readable texts for the study of language. We now have large,
well-designed corpora such as the British National Corpus (BNC), one of the
main data sources used in Textual Patterns. At the same time, we have been
provided with analysis tools which can handle vast text collections and
which are easy to use and require little specialist knowledge beyond ordinary
computer literacy. One of the best is WordSmith Tools (WS), a software
package developed by Mike Scott, one of the authors of Textual Patterns.1
The use of corpora has had far-reaching consequences in linguistics, both
theoretical and applied. The main claim of the book is that corpus resources
may have important applications in language teaching. This is by no means
a new idea. We have the pioneering work of Tim Johns on data-driven

© The Authors
Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd