Book Notes

Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Papers on Language in Society, 1959-1994. CharlesA. Ferguson. Thorn Huebner, ed. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. New York andOxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.348 pp. Collects 24 of Ferguson's papers, 20of them previously published. Huebner, in consultation with Ferguson himself,provides unusually useful editorial introductions to the volume and to each of thefour sections in which the papers are grouped. The introductions orient the readerto broad themes in the work of this distinguished sociolinguist; they also contextu-alize each article and suggest links with Ferguson's other works. The first section,Speech Communities and Language Situations, opens with the 1959 classic "Diglos-sia" and continues with five other articles describing the sociolinguistic complexityof particular communities or regions. The next section, Register and Genre, includesFerguson's important works on baby talk and "foreigner talk," among other articlesconcerned with issues of register (defined as variation across communicative situ-ations) and genre (variation across message types). The third group of articlesfocuses on variation and change. Included here is the substantial new essay "Vari-ation and Drift: Loss of Agreement in Germanic." The final section of the bookassembles six articles on language planning and includes two previously unpub-lished pieces: "Conventional Conventionalization: Planned Change in Language"and "Language and National Development." Ferguson argues that language plan-ning is not just the application of what we know but a topic worthy of study in itsown right. It points, reflexively, to the role of linguists as agents—self-conscious ornot—of change. Finally, a bibliography lists Ferguson's works from 1985-1995. Thereader must consult another volume (the Ferguson festschrift edited by Fishman etal.) for a listing of earlier writings, though many can be retrieved via their mentionin section introductions. [Judith T. Irvine, Brandeis University]

The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology. Donald Bren-neis and Ronald K. S. Macaulay, eds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 19%. 338 pp. Thischoice selection of 15 previously published recent classics by leading scholars wellrepresents the discipline's directions and concerns. The introduction contrastslinguistic anthropology's approach to language as inflected by modalities of cul-ture, power, and performance, with other, scientistically oriented traditions (Chom-skian, Labovian, conversation analytic) that abstract the matrix of language fromcommunicative practices and their social contexts. Part 1 deals with cultural pat-terns of language socialization and addresses the thorny Bernsteinian problem ofthose patterns' adequacy to social roles children will eventually have to assume.The three chapters, authored by S. B. Heath; E. Ochs, R. Smith, and C. Taylor; andS. Feld and B. Schieffelin, are based on research in various U.S. settings and in PapuaNew Guinea. Part 2 engages debates about the role of culture and power ingendered speech and cross-gender (mis)communication. The editors and contribu-tors identify heuristic problems characteristic of many analyses of those much-in-

139