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Language - the loaded weapon: The use and abuse of
language today. London and New York: Longman, 1980. Pp. x + 214.
DWIGHT BOLINGER,
Bolinger's book is about the abuse of language - language used to distort, conceal, con, manipulate and belittle. It can be seen as a contribution to "critical
linguistics" (Fowler, Hodge, Kress & Trew 1979: 196), a term which I shall use
though Bolinger himself does not. The development of critical linguistics will be
seen by some to compromise the established commitment in linguistics to description which shuns questions of value, but it will be welcomed by others who
have doubts about the social role of linguistics, and its relationship to diverse
interests.
The book has many qualities. It is written in a clear, engaging style which the
nonspecialist reader could cope with and enjoy. There is a profusion of apt
examples and references, and a fineness of observation (a characteristic of
Bolinger's writing generally) which is sure to enhance the linguistic consciousness and awareness of a careful reader. The notes provide useful information and
references for those who wish to pursue issues raised in the text, though I found
the basis of choice for the mixed bag of items in "Further Reading" (202-204)
rather difficult to fathom. The book will be particularly useful in the British
University context for students of English taking introductory language courses.
I believe there is a need for linguists to concern themselves with the abuse of
language as an important if relatively neglected aspect of the use of language.
What is not yet clear, however, and what Bolinger's book does little to clarify, is
what role and objectives critical linguistics has or ought to have, and what
interests it represents or ought to represent. After a summary of the contents of
the book, my main concern in this review will be with these questions.
Summary. There are fifteen chapters, which divide into five groups thematically. Chapters 1 and 14 argue the case for an alliance between linguists and
verbal "shamans," those with a normative stance towards language, to tackle
abuse. The shamans are berated for their preoccupation with the relative trivia of
"linguistic etiquette" (2), and for their reluctance to learn from linguists. Linguists are berated for failing to see the value of the concern of shamans for
effective communication. If this is corrected, and the shamans improve their
linguistics (guidelines provided in chapter 14), an alliance is possible.
Chapter 15 offers more guidelines, in this case for controlling the content of
media messages ("ways of achieving foursquare messages" [186]), and calls for
public access to, and public control over, the media.
Chapters 2-5 present a linguist's view of language. Chapter 2 places language
firmly within the context of general communicative behaviour, stresses the importance of nonverbal accompaniments to speech such as gesture and facial
expression, and proposes a gestural theory of the origin of language. It is
suggested that we "think of the communicative resources beyond language as a
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reservoir from which devices are drawn and incorporated in language at its
convenience" (13).
The central theme of chapters 3 and 4 is that "arbitrary and conventional is a
fitting description of distinctive sounds, less so of words, even less of sentences,
and beyond that scarcely fits at a l l . . . by digitizing the bottom layer into a tight
system of signs, human communicators stumbled on a way to open the upper
layers to more and more creative symbolism" (18). The theme is elaborated
through a discussion of the balance between arbitrariness and symbolism in
sounds, words, syntax, and discourse. Chapter 5 is about linguistic change.
Chapter 6 analyses the social prejudices which underlie stigmatization of
nonstandard dialects of English, and the role of such dialects (including Black
English and Spanglish, the Chicano dialect) in promoting solidarity and excluding outsiders. Bolinger detects a certain destabilization of the literary standard
associated with a decline in the need for literacy which reflects the impact of
modern spoken media. He argues forcibly the social necessity of a standard
language, as of "rules of respect, condescension, intimacy, and avoidance"
(55)The remaining chapters (7-13) form the backbone of the book, documenting
abuse and analysing techniques of abuse. Three (9, 11, 13) are case studies, on
sexism, jargon, and the metaphors of tobacco advertising respectively.
The seventh chapter is about words, entities and "pseudo-entities." Given the
tendency to see a name as warranting the existence of a real entity, language is
prone to the abuse of names which label pseudo-entities. Vitamin labels a
pseudo-entity, since what substances are vitamins is a matter of dispute; so does
nation, since the supposed unity of a nation is not real. Compounds of the form
of rum-running are not normally created ' 'till there is some more or less definite
thing out there to name by them" (63), so there is a basis for us to be fooled by,
for instance, consciousness-expanding. "If the pseudo-entities of science are
approximations to reality, those of commerce are parodies of it": like the giant
bar (of chocolate) which the manufacturers reduced from eight to five ounces
(65).
Chapter 8 is about "bias" in language. Words are "loaded," either euphemistically or dysphemistically. In English the adjective is most prone to bias, though
"a bias hidden in a noun is more potent" because it "objectifies" (79). Verbs
seem "least hospitable to bias" (80), but not entirely so: for instance, choice of
reporting verb can convey the speaker's view of the truth of a reported proposition (she made out/ pointed out that she had been ill). We find whole series of
successively discredited euphemisms for particularly "unpleasant" bits of reality
- mental illness, bodily functions, and so on. Syntax can also be loaded: a
reverse polarity tag question "pleads for agreement," tags with commands "soften them or plead for compliance," agentless passives can "conceal the agent,"
an attributive adjective construction has a "concealed proposition" (84-88).
The chapter on sexism draws heavily on work by feminist linguists, as
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Bolinger acknowledges (90). The biased language used to talk about women
reflects "women's status as property" and as "sex-objects"; thus daughters get
married off, but sons don't (91-92). Even terms of endearment trivialize. Terms
not explicitly referring to males are stereoty pic ally interpreted that way (e.g.
student), as are supposedly generic uses of the masculine pronoun; Bolinger
discusses various proposed replacements for "generic" he, finding none of them
totally convincing. Women's speech is more influenced by social than biological
factors; its characteristics indicate that women are expected to be polite, unobtrusive and correct. Attempts at intervention (Ms, chairperson, etc.) have led to
innovative forms being attached to stereotypes of feminists. As women gain
economic independence, "reducing asymmetry will probably take the form of
women laying equal claim to masculine charactersitics in language" (103).
Chapter 10 deals with deception: concealment (evasion) and propaganda. Evasion is defined as "a violation of some responsibility of disclosure" ( n o ) ; it may
be "non-propositional," as in the suggestively misleading images of advertising,
or "propositional," based upon forms of "literalism," such as advertising a
product made from refined sugar coated with refined syrup as brown sugar
(106-108). Those with most social power have the greatest ability to evade and
conceal. The main agencies of propaganda, commercial and political, are the
media, whose control and responsible use raise "vital questions of survival"
(115). Bolinger documents the exploitation in propaganda of the sort of "loaded
language" discussed in chapter 8. There are also some interesting comments on
the excessive claims which have been made for voice-prints and stress-analyzers.
In the case study in chapter 11, jargon is seen as a sociolect which "identifies
its users to one another and shields them from intrusion" (126). The "sham
authority" of jargon rests upon its pseudo-scientific vocabulary. It is addicted to
circumlocutionary complex noun phrases (surgical relocation activities for
"kidnapping"; sleep systems for "beds"), its syntax "circumnavigates,"
semantically it is "elevated, ameliorative, euphemistic" (130-132). The recent
proliferation of "jargonauts" is put down to the increase in numbers of "halfeducated people in a position to afflict the public with their words" (134). It can
be combatted by educating the public to it: "seen through, it collapses" (135).
Chapter 12 is about metaphor, which is central to our constant involvement in
naming, "coming upon something new a n d . . . deciding whether it belongs
under Label A or Label B " (140). The metaphor of space applied to time is
"inherited from the childhood of the race"; that of value is "the single most
influential metaphor in all elaborated societies" (141-142). Through the
metaphors of the past, the world is to some extent prefabricated in one's language. An aspect of social control is the sanction given by governments to certain
metaphors and their disapproval of others. Societies differ in their favoured
metaphors. The case study in chapter 13 charts the metaphors and "themes"
(clusters of metaphors) used by the American tobacco industry in its efforts to
combat through its advertising the antismoking lobby.
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Discussion. The discussion will be organized under five headings: standard,
stigma, and status; words and things; loaded language; deception and manipulation; a role for critical linguistics.
Standard, stigma, and status. Bolinger argues the need for standard languages
in universal, ahistorical terms: "a society needs a standard" (52); "standards are
inevitable - and their champions are eternal" (55). But not all societies have, or
have always had, standards. Standardisation occurs under particular historical
conditions; thus the development of standard English in Britain occurred mainly
during the period of transition from feudalism to capitalism, and can be seen as
part of the process of unification which corresponded to the expansion of the
market in the economic sphere.
Then there is the question of class. Bolinger concedes at one point, but without
elaboration, that the standard is "to some degree... a barrier of social class"
(137). But in the substantive discussion of chapter six, class does not figure. To
see a standard as needed by "society" begs the question. The spread of standard
English corresponded first and foremost to the interests of the middle class,
emerging as the economically dominant class. And the prestige of the standard
has been tied in with the power and prestige of the middle class, which has
provided through its allies and representatives in the cultural sphere its models
and its shamans. In that sense, it is a "class dialect." Although the standard has
been ideologically projected and practically promoted as a classless "national
language," it is widely seen outside the middle class as alien. Its status as a
prestige target is not general: for instance, the Milroys have shown that the
standard has little influence in tightly-knit working class communities in Belfast
(Milroy & Milroy 1978).
This underlines the need to see the role and status of standards not in universal
terms, but as historically variable. In our society, in addition to roles we can
group under "efficiency of communication," the standard has a symbolic role:
its status symbolizes the status of "its" class, and is one aspect of middle class
hegemony. We might correspondingly expect social changes which affect the
position of the middle class to also affect the standard. It would be interesting to
investigate the "destabilization" of standard English which Bolinger notes (51) in
the light of tensions in middle class hegemony in Britain during recent decades.
The neglect of class and history also colours Bolinger's discussion of linguistic
stigma and rules of appropriacy. He has little to say about the stigmatization of
working class speech, though he says quite a lot about stigmas attaching to
Black, Chicano, and women's speech. And his explanation of stigma again
resorts to the universal and eternal, "a universal flaw in human nature: to build
self-esteem by looking down on those less fortunate" (89). How does this explain the stigma attaching to working class Liverpool speech among working
class Londoners, and vice versa? Linguistic stigmas are an index and a reflection
of antagonisms between classes and groups; their investigation and critique requires reference to the workings of the particular socieities which generate them.
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Bolinger's attitude to rules of appropnacy relating to status is ambivalent.
Chapter six contains a spirited defence of "rules of respect, condescension,
intimacy, and avoidance" (55), yet elsewhere he points out that status marking in
English is "the more powerful for being insidious" (72), and chapter nine is in
part a critique of rules of status as they affect women. There is an attempted
justification in chapter six: "Societies differ in the signs of deference they expect, but there is always some degree of formality when one speaks to a stranger,
an employer, a clergyman, or someone of rank" (54). Universals yet again.
Bolinger has placed himself in a contradictory position. One can only conclude
that he is prepared to criticize rules of appropriacy which belittle women because
he is prepared to criticize the social reality they reflect; whereas when it comes to
other forms of inequality (class, hierarchy, etc.) both social reality and rules are
sacrosanct. The appeal to universals is a red herring: it fails to distinguish the
dimensions of solidarity and power (Brown & Gilman i960), and blatantly
projects the power differentials and divisions of our class-divided society onto all
societies. Moreover, dialect differences in rules of appropriacy are overlooked;
the rules of the standard are those of the society as a whole only in the partial,
projected and superimposed sense in which the standard is "society's."
Words and things. Bolinger's pursuit of pseudo-entities in chapter 6 is somewhat over enthusiastic. Some comments by Engels (1895) are surprisingly apposite: "although a concept has the essential nature of a concept and cannot therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it must first be
abstracted, it is still something more than a fiction, unless you are going to
declare all the results of thought fictions... From the moment we accept the
theory of evolution all our concepts of organic life correspond only approximately to reality... The concept fish includes a life in water and breathing
through gills; how are you going to get from fish to amphibian without breaking
through this concept? And it has been broken through and we know a whole
series of fish which have developed their air bladders further into lungs and can
breathe air" (177, 178).
If we are to say that vitamin refers to a pseudo-entity because there is some
indeterminacy about its extension, there is nothing to stop us applying the same
line of argument to a host of common or garden names like book, chair, flower,
and so on: their extensions are also arguably indeterminate. We can generate a
world full of pseudo-entities, in the process convincing ourselves (as Bolinger
seems more or less convinced) that reality itself is unknowable, that we are
dependent upon the "reality" constructed for us in our language.
The question we should be asking is not whether our meanings merely approximate reality, but how adequately our meanings approximate reality. This question and the mode of linguistic critique it implies play an important role in the
development of scientific understanding. Take another of Bolinger's pseudoentities, the nation, an entity which "has no real unity," only an imposed unity
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which defines nations in terms of state boundaries (64). Bolinger's critique here
is appropriate, but misdirected. It is difficult to see how we could make much
sense of history if we dispensed with the concept of nation; the same is true of the
concept of state. The real object of critique is the ideological reduction of the two
concepts in thought and language, and the grounds for critique are historical
events which demonstrate the independence of these real entities, as well as their
complex interweaving, and fuzziness. Here the critique of language (the use of
nation and state as synonyms, which Bolinger is guilty of [64]) merges into the
critique of ideology (the doctrine of reduction), and into the critique of reality
(the persecution of national minorities).
The indeterminacies of our meanings are often indexical of confusions in
reality. Bolinger compares / have earned my wage and I expect you to pay it and
The President of Continental Motors earns $500,000 a year. The question of
whether there are two different meanings is "sidetracked" by the "two-faced
verb" (63). Yes, but it's sidetracked first by a two-faced reality which equates
the recompense received for production of a certain quantity of values with that
received on the grounds of legal entitlement or tradition.
Changing reality demands new meanings. Bolinger gives unemployment and
job as examples of "words which incorporate a certain amount of undisputed
reality but lay claim to more"; there have always been people "idle," but the
problem became "reified" when unemployment came into common use "around
1895." This ignores the social changes which gave rise to the new meaning:
"Clearly the modern sense of unemployment depends upon its seperation from
the associations of idle: it describes a social situation rather than a personal
condition {idleness) . . . it represents the specialization of productive effort to
paid employment by another, which has been an important part of the history of
capitalist production and wage-labour" (Williams 1976: 274-75). Bolinger's
critique of the "idiocy" of job (143) - because a job can be a useless activity just
as easily as a useful one - stops significantly short: the language reflects the
alienated nature of work in our society.
So also does reification. Bolinger uses the term reification for "the materializing of abstractions" (59), "materializing" in the sense of giving a name to. This
is misleading; as the Engels quotation implies, naming always presupposes
abstraction. But the term with its standard sense ("the apprehension of human
phenomena as if they were things" (Berger & Luckman 1967: 106) is of value in
this context: thus the employer who sheds labour, takes on more hands, puts on
another shift, or declares people redundant. Reification has an effect on the
language which goes beyond the workplace, as some of Bolinger's examples
(e.g., terms for women) indicate; a striking example is the Australian term bike
to refer to a woman, drawing on the sexual sense of ride. Again, the language is
here indexical of the reality, as Marx pointed out in a comment on the "cynicism '' of Ricardo 's language: ' 'To put the costs of production of hats in the same
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category as the subsistence costs of people is to turn people into hats. But don't
howl too much about the cynicism: the cynicism is in the reality, not in the words
which designate it" (Erckenbrecht 1973: 131; my translation).
Loaded language. My main disagreement with Bolinger about loaded language is in line with my comments on the standard: he does not start his analysis
from the real conflicts and divisions of society. The evaluation aspect of word
meaning reflects social evaluations of what words refer to, a point which is
obscured by Bolinger's term "bias," which suggests reprehensible individual
attitudes. And as varying interests lead to varying evaluations, so evaluative
meanings differ between classes and groups. But not only evaluative meanings,
also meanings per se: "referential meaning is molded by evaluation" (Voloshinov 1973: 105), and different evaluations generate different meanings.
Bolinger concentrates in chapter 8 on "the common coin, the forms that
belong to no particular segment of society and are freely bandied across every
social class" (72). This short-circuits the issues raised in the last paragraph. It is
also misleading because the existence of common forms does not preclude what
Voloshinov called the "multiplicity of meanings" and "multiaccentuality" of
(the evaluative meanings of) words (1973: 81). Thus profit may be "bandied
across every social class," but to a worker it may be a "dirty word," understood
as what the boss makes out of him, whereas for the employer it's the snow-white
return on capital invested or something similar. Such discrepancies are not
allowed to coexist, they call for intervention, "associative" and "conceptual
engineering" (Leech 1974: 53-58): perhaps redefining profit as "income for
creating new jobs," or using revenues or income from investment instead of
profit. Notice here that evaluation and "meaning" or "concept" are inextricably
linked; Bolinger's claim that "many concepts come in both shades" (i.e., rosy
and gray) "producing clusters of synonyms and antonyms" (72) repeats the
erroneous view common in semantics that aspects of word meaning can be
separated like the segments of an orange. Can we really regard idle and unemployed as synonyms?
To isolate common forms with conflicting meanings from different forms is an
artificial separation. The same employer might label as rationalization what the
same worker labels deindustrialization. What is & fetus to a proabortionist may
be a baby to an antiabortionist (Bolinger: 138), which implies different meanings
of baby. And one class or group may have a meaning which adversaries do not
have: it is not just that antiabortionists and left-wingers respectively tend not to
use the words preborn infant (Bolinger: 140) and subversive, then tend not to
have those meanings.
I suggest that we can reach a better understanding of the use of loaded language in the media, propaganda, and so forth if we start from the recognition that
conflicting interests and values are reflected and expressed in conflicting language. Even in terms of language, the propagandist is intervening in conflicts
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which are already there, and the selections of the journalist or newscaster may
reveal not just bias, but social values.
So the question of interests and values should be paramount in the critique of
loaded language. Take euphemism, for instance. Bolinger's discussion of
euphemism elides the issue of whose interests are served by the embellishment of
a particular bit of reality. It is for instance in the interests of the dominant class
forces in Britain to embellish unemployment: being made redundant became a
euphemism for getting the sack. As the level of unemployment has risen,
Bolinger's "domino theory of euphemism" (74) has begun to work: in a recent
television interview an employer insisted he was seeking union cooperation not
in making redundancies, but in a "voluntary severance scheme." In such cases
the domino effect is assisted by the existence of groups whose interests do not
require the reality to be embellished: a sardonic trade unionist confided to me
recently that his mates had been made redundant, but he'd been sacked.
Bolinger's discussion of gay illustrates his neglect of divergent interests and
values: "Though it had long been used as a euphemism for homosexual, the
current militancy of homosexuals gave it currency, and most people shied away
from using it in its older sense of "joyous." To have a word with its precise area
of meaning suddenly declared off limits . . . is a loss that a sensitive user of the
language feels keenly" (74-75); "gay is ruined by homosexual associations"
(56).
In actuality there are various views on gay: that of gays who have come out;
that of gays who have not; that of heterosexuals sensitive to the problems of gay
people; that of heterosexuals who are insensitive; that of heterosexuals hostile to
gays. Bolingercuts through an investigation of the multiaccentuality this implies
(witness the dysphemistic gay boy) by adopting a view which is certainly
heterosexually oriented. I think this example shows that the alternative to recognizing different values and relating them to interests is an elitism which purports
to be above such differences, but which cannot avoid taking sides.
Bolinger also takes the view that grammatical constructions can be loaded. His
examples are relatively obvious ones (see the Summary). How deep into the
grammar loading goes is an important question. Fowler et. al. (1979: 185 ff.)
have shown fairly convincingly that choices among options in transitivity,
modality, and so on - their grammar is Hallidayan - have significant ideological
implications.
Deception and manipulation. Bolinger's discussion of "power and deception" in chapter 10 is basically about public language. But ordinary conversation
also merits attention. Earlier comments on status are relevant here: asymetries
between participants distribute unequally rights over topic, turn-taking, and so
forth, as well as opportunities to deceive and manipulate. Bolinger tends to take
conversation under "ideal" conditions, where speakers are roughly equal, as a
model for all conversation. This seems to be the implication of various observa117
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tions through the book, such as: "We EXPECT our listeners to agree with our
assumptions, our hidden propositions - it comes... close to being a rule of
discourse" (77).
Bolinger has some significant things to say about various types of public
language - advertising, "bureaucratese," the gobbledygook of Government
agencies, and so on. But he does not squarely confront the question of the
shaping of public opinion about what is going on in the world by the media.
Although there is controversy about the extent to which the media do shape
opinion, whether or to what degree this is done consciously, whether or to what
degree the public are taken in by it, it is now I think generally accepted that some
shaping does go on. Again, the question of interests needs raising: in reflecting
"pressure towards implicitly affirming the status quo, towards confirming the
'ordinary man' in his existing attitude, towards discouraging refusals to conform" (Hoggart 1976: x), the media predominantly act in accordance with the
interests of the established dominant class.
Bolinger points out that "we are less apt to question the concealed proposition
than the explicit one" (88). I don't think the full significance of this observation
is brought out in the book. Concealed propositions are a central component in
media representation of goings-on in the world. They are a vehicle for naturalising ideologies some of which are rarely stated or discussed explicitly, and whose
impact is a function of constant repetition. Presuppositions are an important
device: the freedom of the press, the Soviet threat, the national interest. These
phrases flow so glibly from the pens and tongues of journalists, newscasters, and
commentators that it takes an effort to question the propositions they presuppose: is a press controlled by monopolies "free"? Is there a threat from the
Soviet Union? Does a divided society have common interests? Similarly the
propositions implied by labellings: trade unionists are standardly labeled militant
or moderate in the British media, implying that they divide neatly in reality into
two groups - the baddies and the goodies.
Bolinger notes that "the dissemination of news - everywhere one of the most
powerful institutions - survives only to the extent that it is believed to be truthtelling" ( n o ) . All the more reason to give it critical attention; at least the
interests represented by advertising and official statements, which receive the
bulk of Bolinger's scrutiny, are fairly explicit.
A role for critical linguistics. Critical linguistics is a form of intervention
in language. Intervention has received most discussion recently in relation to
sexist language, though in my view, lack of clarity about the relationship between language and social reality has led to a lot of confusion. Thus Robin
Lakoff states uncompromisingly that "social change creates language change,
not the reverse" (Lakoff 1975: 47), but then goes on to concede that language
change can influence social change to an extent.
I suggest that the following assumptions constitute a fruitful (if schematic)
framework for talking about intervention: language is a part of social reality, not
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somehow outside it or above it; the various components of social reality reciprocally determine each other; hence a language reflects other parts of social reality;
and conversely, other parts of social reality reflect properties of a language. Thus
we should look to see in those features of a language we can call sexist a
reflection of sexism outside language, but we should also allow for their influence, for instance in reinforcing sexist attitudes and behaviour.
As a consequence: changing a bit of language is not in itself changing the
social reality; but changing social reality is partly a matter of changing language
- one cannot be said to have eliminated sexism from social reality if a language
remains sexist; there is no absolute rule about which parts of social reality change
first; because of the reciprocal determinations between different parts of social
reality, intervention in language can trigger or facilitate change outside language;
but for the same reason, intervention in language can hardly be successful unless
compatible changes are happening elsewhere. Finally it should be added that
intervention in language is not merely a matter for feminists, linguists or shamans; we do it all the time in our ordinary use of language.
Seeing language in these terms as part of social reality is in line with my
emphasis throughout the review on linguistic critique as a part of the critique of
social reality and ideology. To believe that one can uncover and correct linguistic
abuse while leaving other dimensions of social reality untouched is idealistic,
that is, it assumes language to be an autonomous domain. An important corollary
is that linguistic critique necessarily takes up certain interests as against others: in
my view, it ought to represent the interests of the victims of social (including
linguistic) exploitation, oppression, and manipulation.
How does Bolinger's position compare? He has placed himself in something of
a dilemma. He believes something must be done about the abuses documented in
the book, but his solutions are unconvincing because they stop short of their
social mark. Thus in the final chapter a case is developed for the "public
ownership" of public language (187); we need to challenge "the self-interest of
the forces that control one-way communication, the print and broadcast media"
(183). But the forces that control the media are inextricably bound up with the
class which controls the economy and other key sectors and institutions. The
critique of the control and abuse of public language and the media can reach its
objectives only via a much broader strategy for social change in which it has a
small part to play.
Shamanism and linguistic critique have different roles and objectives, and
serve different interests; pace Bolinger, an alliance is hardly feasible. The task of
the shamans has been to bolster the standard, providing it with a prestigious
apparatus of rules, and acting as an enforcement agency. Indirectly they contribute to the preservation of the social status quo. Leapman (1980) points to a
significant link between the fortunes of shamanism and the political climate:
"America's swing to conservatism has coincided with a revival of pedantry, and
the two are probably connected." Bolinger seems to be uncomfortably sus119
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pended between linguistic critique and the shamans: his remarks on sexism
belong to the former, his comments on status place him in the ranks of the latter.
The precept that the linguist's task is to describe (latterly, explain) without
getting involved in values is challenged by critical linguistics. I believe that it is a
principle which derives from the tyranny of the linguist's distinctive concept of
language, autonomous language. One can see the roots of this concept in the
struggle to achieve an independent discipline within the structures imposed by
western academic institutions. Perhaps now that the departments are established,
the nervous defensiveness can be sufficiently overcome for the concept to be
critically examined, and, in Engels' words, "broken through."
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Books.
Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (i960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.),
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Reviewed by NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH
Department of Linguistics
University of Lancaster
Lancashire LA$ gPR, England
(Received 19 March 1981)
C. ROLLINS, Benjamin Lee Whorf: Lost generation theories of mind,
language, and religion. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Popular Culture Association, University Microfilms International, 1980. Pp. x + 91.
PETER
Wincing slightly at the word "Religion" as I picked up Rollins for the first time,
I looked over the table of contents and the preface: he had actually done what I
myself had dreamed of doing - he had interviewed Whorf's widow, he had paged
through Whorf's diaries, unpublished essays, short story, and novel, gleaning
previously unknown tidbits for a new generation of linguists and anthropologists
trying to understand Whorf. Here would be the first manifestation, written by a
Harvard historian, of the current revival of interest in Whorf. My final verdict,
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