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Reversing Language Shift Theoretical And

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Reversing Language Shift Theoretical And

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Book Reviews 97

how the individual participants define their own and each other's age categories
and how, as a result of these age categories, they relate to one another. The model
based on communication accommodation theory provides a valuable tool for this
type of analysis, in that it focuses on communicative attuning—strategies adopted by
the interactants to increase or decrease social distance.
The authors examine closely the sequences of dialogue that involve self-disclo-
sure. Of particular interest are those sequences of painful self-disclosure, which
involve such topics as bereavement, severe ill health, and loneliness, and those
sequences of age disclosure. It is interesting to note that painful self-disclosure
occurs in 33 of the 40 first-acquaintance encounters and that it is far more frequent
when at least one of the participants is elderly. In intergenerational interactions the
painful self-disclosures are almost always on the part of the elderly participant. The
authors find that the subjects use strategies of self-disclosure to negotiate age and
health identities.
Cultural stereotypes can influence both the strategies used by the speakers and
the effects that those strategies have on the listeners. Strategies used by interactants
may be accommodating stereotypes that they hold and not accommodating actual
communicative characteristics.
The CAT model used in this study is very useful in explaining various forms of
unintentional miscommunication that may result from this incorporation of stereo-
types. The authors find that the discourse strategies used by the subjects in this
study frequently reflect and reinforce the beliefs and stereotypes that the subjects
hold concerning "appropriate" roles for the elderly. As the authors point out, the
concept of the "elderly" role is significant for both parties in the interaction. It would
be interesting for this study to incorporate an analysis of the role concepts that the
elderly hold to be appropriate for the younger interactants.
Language, Society and the Elderly: Discourse, Identity and Ageing provides a signifi-
cant starting point for future studies on how patterns of talk and communication
between generations can serve to define social categories related to age. Such
studies can be of special significance to the field of applied gerontology. The age
and health identities that one assumes for oneself can have an important impact on
one's actual physical well-being and health. As Coupland, Coupland, and Giles
suggest, further studies of the strategies used in intergenerational communication
have important implications for the training of health-care providers. In their work
Coupland, Coupland, and Giles have established new directions for future sociol-
inguistic research.

Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance


to Threatened Languages. Joshua A. Fishman. Multilingual Matters, 76. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters, 1991.431 pp.

JANE H. HILL
University of Arizona

This is a wonderful book—scholarly, practical, and humane. Linguistic anthro-


pologists will want to read it for its sociolinguistic sophistication and for its
celebration of local languages and their communities. But Reversing Language Shift
(RLS) is especially valuable for scholars who advise speakers of local languages on
98 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

the development of RLS programs. One component of such advice should now be
to share copies of the volume with local leaders who read English.
Fishman argues that the etiology and symptomatology of language shift has been
studied to death and that the continuing concentration in the literature on language
obsolescence and death, instead of language maintenance and development, re-
flects dominant-language ideology. He points out that language shift is by no means
inevitable, that it has been reversed in the past, and that communities can draw on
such success stories to develop RLS programs. He reports many years of field work
on RLS efforts for Irish, Basque, Frisian, Navajo, Spanish in the United States,
Yiddish, Maori, indigenous and immigrant languages in Australia, Modem He-
brew, Quebec French, and Catalan, and provides up-to-date information on the
precise status of these languages and the formal and informal systems that support
or threaten them.
The theoretical framework is an eight-stage typology of language shift and a set
of priorities for RLS programs. Thus stage 8, in which only a few isolated elders still
speak a language, is the situation faced by many Native American communities,
and Fishman is sensible and optimistic about what can be hoped for in the way of
"reassembly" of such a language and its transmission to adult learners. In stage 7,
speakers constitute a community but are beyond child-bearing age. Here Hshman
counsels against the isolation of these adults in a round of enjoyable local-language
occasions that have little effect in socializing a new generation of speakers. At stage
6 the informal oral transmission of the language occurs in a demographically-con-
centrated population, reinforced by many intertwining systems in the community
that are dedicated to RLS and are necessary in any case: networks of friends and
kin who gather for fun, systems of care for children and the elderly, local groups
dedicated to planning and politics around whatever affairs are likely to engage
multiple generations in a community. The subsequent stages include: (5) locally
schooled literacy; (4) the use of the language in compulsory lower-level education;
(3) the use of the language in the lower work sphere outside the community; (2) the
use of the language in lower government services and mass media; (1) use of the
language at the highest institutional levels (short of political independence). Fish-
man points out that many RLS efforts fail because stage 6 is bypassed; instead, RLS
advocates with institutional bases in schools or government may focus on attaining
a token presence of the language in those institutions, which are relatively distant
from the primary communities in which new generations are lovingly socialized to
speak a language.
Reversing Language Shift is a long and meaty book, including eight theoretical
chapters and six chapters of case studies. Each chapter has an extensive bibliog-
raphy.

Development and Structures of Creole Languages: Essays in Honor of Derek


Bickerton. Francis Byrne and Thorn Huebner, eds. Creole Language Library, 9.
Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991. 222 pp.

JEFFREY P. WILLIAMS
Cleveland State University

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