8 1::.

Contact, Creoliza- London : Universiry

Reviewed by Jan RT*

Thomasx an:! K=tufman (henceforth T ) have written a beautiful, sti ing and doubtlessly provocative book. It is marvelously edited and produced by the Universitv of California Press, It contains !ots of good ideas, thorough . analyses, a wealth of data, and perhaps something new on language and time (or language in time).

The book contains nine chspters, to be divided, I think, in three parts. The first part comprises chapters 1 through 3. TK start from a number of general remarks on the purity, origin and evolution of language, contrasting Boas and Sapir in this respect. They then move on to a sharp and persuasive critique of the wide-spread view of linguistic constraints on interference. In chapter 3, they outline an analytical framework for coma&induced language change. This framework is then applied to four domains in the study of language change and language evolution, in what I conceive as the second part of the book (chapters 4 through 8). They review language maintenance (ch. 4), lan- guage shift with normal transmission (ch. 5), abrupt creolization (ch. 6) and pidgins (ch. 7). This then leads to a ‘retrospection’ (ch. 8), in which the findings from part two are connected to theoretical points mentioned earlier in the book. The third part, a massive chapter 9, is r rved for case studies on languages such as Asia Minor reek, Ma’a, Michif, ednyj Ah& Afrikaans, Chinook Jargon, English and

In the first pages of the book, TK describe their position as follows:

“The key to our approach - and the single point on which we stand opposed to most structuralists (including generativists) urho have studied these issues - is our conviction that the history of a language is a functton of the history of its speakers, and not an independent phenomenon that can be thoroughly studied without reference to the social context in which it is embedded” (p. 4)

From this statement, one could deduce that TK intend to follow a strongly sxiolinguistic course in their analysis. Yet they emphasize:

* Correspondence address: J. Blommaert, Dept. of Swahili, State University of Ghent, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.

0378-2166/90/$03.50 a 1990 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

814 Book reviews

"that our siudy is not primarily :.~ sociolingutstic one. We have examined cases in ~hich contact- induced language chttllgt? h;is occurred, and have correlated the linguistic restllts with what is km;~n (and sometimes it is vcr.~ tittlel of the sociohislorical circumstances of the various contact siluations.'" (p. 4/

This nuanced position is the main theme of the book. TK constantly seek to balance purely linguistic explanations with sociohistorical ones.

The sociolinguistic bias certainly provides them with a number of very forceful arguments against purely structural or formal zpproaches to language change, because of the fact that "social factors can and very often do overcome structural resistance to interference at all levels" (p. 15). This insight leads to a critical reassessment of earlier findings on contact-induced language change by Bickerton, Weinreich, Comrie, Giv6n and (many) others. The common assumption of the stability of a certain core grammar, as well as the mechanistic simplification implicit in universalist approaches, are both falsi- i~ed on the basis of arguments derived from a sociolinguistic analytical apparatus. TK conclude (p. 35) that "linguistic interference is conditioned in the first instance by social factors, not linguistic ones"" in other words, the view that a language's structure determines the subsequent development of that language is unjustified. A purely formal-linguistic perspective on lan- guage evolution, bypassing sociohistorical influences, is a wrong perspective.

A purely sociohistorical explanation, on the ether hand, is equally mislead- ing (cf. p. 47), because, ultimately, the answers must be sought in multiple, not simplistic single, causation. TK advance a methodological trade-off between internal and external motivations, in which both the respective value of internal vs. external motivations as well as the possibility of combined motivation should be taken into account (p. 57). TK clearly move away from common, monocausal, approaches to language change, in which a phenome- non observed in one case leads to explanations by association in other cases. The same phenomenon can have completely different internal or external motivations in different occurrences. This more cautious methodological ~ance is certainly one of the most valuable elements in TK's book, and it may prove to be a powerful theoleticai position. In the book, it leads TK to a fundamental critique of systems ef explanation in the more traditional approaches ~o language change and language evolution (see esp. ch. 8). As such, I consider this book a valuable contribution to the theory of language dynamics.

Despite the book's value, I want to comment on two intriguing points. The first one pertains to the proposed balance between internal and exterpal explanations; the second one pertains to the way in which TK use the concept of time.

In trying to ,,,,..,_,...~"'--1"-"- both purely linguistic explanations with so-called extralinguistic ones, TK's theoretical proposals reflect some kind of philo-

Book rerie~'s 815

sophical struggle, in which they refuse to choose one side over the other. This is not wrong, but ! think the way in which they propose a combined ana!ytical framework is unsatisl:ying. Implicit in their approach, and despite claims of the contrary, is a permanent prominence of linguistic structure over extralinguistic factors. In a way, TK's proposal to integrate sociohistorical motivations can be reduced to expanding the realm of linguistic analysis to encompass nonlinguistic factors. The explanatory direction is always aimed at linguistic sti:ucture, extralinguistic factors are {though sometimes crucial) additional evidence. Take, e.g. the statement in which they define th:: ~- metho- dological states of external explanations:

"an external explanation for a particular structural change is appropriate, either alone or in conjunction with an internal motivation, when a source language and a source structure in that language can be identified." (p. 63)

I conclude from this that linguistic logic must be respected before arguments such as prestige, power or social structure in general can be adduced. This means that one type of explanations is ruled out from the field of explaining language char,~ge: purely attitudinal, stylistic explanations, like the ones pro- posed by Fabian (1982) on Shaba Swahili, and detectable in Goyvaerts' (1988) account of Zairean Indoubil, including political motives, like the ones noted by Fabian (1986) on the origin of Swahili in Shaba. In these cases, contact alone is not the issue. Indoubil-users construct a mixed language on the basis of strongly attitudinal perceptions of other languages such as English, French, Portuguese and Flemish. No mechanistic explanation can suffice here. Lin- guistic structure fs here a mere side-product of a communicative phenomenon in which sociological factors are paramount. In Fabian's (1986) analysis, it is argued that a pid'ginised form of Swahiii was consciously introduced by the Belgian colonial administration in the Belgian Congo, on the basis of all kinds of political and other motives - linguistic ones being totally absent, since Swahili was not spoken in the Shaba province. Fabian calls this phenomenon 'creolization without pidginization'.

TK offer an approach through which the products of language change can be adequately analyzed. The process itself, including the many subjective 'why's', are still left unanswered. This can be witnessed from the way in which TK handle the conceot of speech community. Apart from a largely underde- fined use of the notion of power, speech comn,,a~L, is a mainly quantitative concept. A variant can become 'the main speech', without bea::'-e any symbolic social force, whereas minority variants can, without being anybodys native language, bear tremendous social prestige and have a meaningful influence upon speech behavior in the main speech (see Blommaert and Gysels (1.987) on Campus Kiswahili). TK would explain this in terms of intense contact, but precisely why minority, 'nobody's' variants can impose a direc-

816 Book reviews

tion on that contact, surpassing seemingly more powerful ones, cannot be taken into account since it would require a more sophisticated and diversified notion of speech community. To me, TK don't materialize their initial paradigm of a language's history being that of its speakers. Whereas lan~uage can, according to some, be viewed as a relatively simple analytical concepL the speakers certainly aren't. We don't read a speaker's history from TK's book.

Equally hybrid is the curious construction of 'time' in TK's approach. And again, I think this reflects their struggle against purely formal approaches. TK realize that the traditional approaches to the study of language and time are prototTpica! instances of atempora! linguistics. As observed by Foucault and others, the logic of linguistics made time fall inside language: Time became readable from phonological laws of change, or from lexicostatistical analysis. There is no 'real' (historical or human) time in much of diachronic linguistics, and if it is, it is never an analytical concept (see e.g. Bossuyt (1986)). Furthermore, they revolt against the asocial bias of analyses of contact- induced language change. But, as outlined above, the social influences are strictly speaking secondary evidence in their approach, and as a consequence, linguistic time, dictated by the mechanisms of linguistic change, is presup- posed as the basis on which explanations are formulated. But this linguistic time is no longer empty, it has been 'filled' with a number of sociohistofical data serving as additional evidence. Thus we come to a moderately articulated view of 'language IN time', instead of traditional 'language AND time'. On the other hand, historical time sets the limits within which linguistic time can play its role, while both 'times' are not integrated. This phenomenon is also observable in Nurse and Spear's (1985) work on the history of Kiswahili, where linguistic analysis is combined with archaeological and palaeontological findings into a fragmentary reconstruction of the genesis of the Swahili- speaking community in East Africa. It is a fascinating phenomenon, since it demonstrates two things: (1)i :hat linguists feel the need to give language a human (temporal) reality; (2) that they experience enormous difficulties in integrating precisely these human elements into traditional linguistic discourse.

Both points I discussed make the book a provocative one. TK explore new avenues in thinking about language and time, but refuse to become iconoclastic. The result is a compromise, in which very valuable points are mixed with fundamental flaws. Maybe their book should be seen as a product of contact-induced change in linguistics, in which case I hope that natural evolu- tion will take the ideas contained in it further in the direction of full development.

References

Blommaert, Jan and M arjolein Gysels, 1987. 'Campus Kiswahili: Language planning, language

Book re~,iews 817

attitudes, and the emergence of a mixed variant among Tanzanian academic staff'. Working papers in Kiswahili 1.

Bossuyt, Alain, 1986. Funcl onal requirements: Causes or constraints upon language change? Belgian Journal of LingL'isdcs 1: 127-147.

Fabian, Johannes, 1982. Scratching the surface: The poetics of borrowing in Shaba Swahili. Anthropological Linguistics 24: 14-50.

Fabian, Johannes, 1986. Language and colonial power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goyvaerts, Didier, 1988. Indoubil: A Swahili hybrid in Bukavu. Language in Society 17:231-242. Nurse, Derek and Thomas Spear, 1985. The Swahili. Reconstructing the history and language of

an African society 800--1500. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press

Attain Burkhardt, Soziale Akte, Sprechakte und Textillokutionen: A. Rei- nachs Rechtsphilosophie und die moderne Linguistik. Tiibingen: Niemeyer, !986. 466 pp. DM 138.00.

Reviewed by Klaus-Uwe PANTHER*

The title of Armin Burkhardt'~ book is slightly misleading, because only 30 pages out of more than 400 deal with 'text iilocutions'. The bulk of B.'s book consists of a lengthy critique of speech act theory. B. proposes an alternative model of linguistic action, which, he claims, has been inn,:,'nee, by the German philosopher of law Adoif Reinach (!883-1917). It i~ not possi01e, within the limits of this review, to do full justice to Reinach's important work. Suffice it to say that, as early as 1913, Reinach had developed a full-fledged theory of social acts (including speech acts), which B., in many respects, considers to be superior to Austin's or Sea:le's classical works. I do not wish to discuss this claim here. The read,:r is referred to ch. 2 of B.'s book, which contains a useful introduction to, and discussion of, Reinach's 'phenomenol- ogy of law' and its significance for speech act theory.

In what follows, I shall concentrate on ch. 3 of B.'s book, in which B. presents his own version of speech act theory. I shall briefly consider B.'s notion of meaning (2.1), discuss some theoretical and terminological innovations (2.2), consider the charge that traditional speech act theory is subject to an 'ontological fallacy' (2.3), and finally examine in some more detail B.'s classification of speech act verbs (2.4). * Correspondence address: K.-U. Panther, Seminar fiir Englische Sprache und Kultur, Universi- t~it Hamburg, Hamburg, West Germany.