Language wars and linguistic politics By Louis-Jean Calvet
2000; Linguistic Society of America; Volume: 76; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/lan.2000.0035
ISSN1535-0665
Autores Tópico(s)Gender Studies in Language
Resumo202 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) petitive, often breaking into an interviewee's response . In computer-mediated communication, the male users' adversarial style of interaction appears to be the norm. The final chapter of Part 2, 'Difference -and-dominance and beyond' (130-46), focuses on the preoccupation of researchers with differences in men's and women's language and goes on to comment on Deborah Tannen' s books on interaction between men and women. At the end of the chapter, T makes this interesting comment about feminist linguistics : 'If it is going to remain feminist, it needs to keep its emancipatory aim in view .... the challenge now is how to conceptualize gender without polarization ' (145). In Part 3, 'Discourse and the construction of gender ' (147-234), T offers a critical perspective on language and gender. In one chapter she examines consumer femininity and reminds the reader that women' s identities vary because class and ethnicity structure women differently, but ultimately feminine identity is something each woman creates forherself. In the following chapter, T discusses how masculine identities are constructed, focusing on the dominant form, which she calls hegemonic masculinity—i.e. the masculinity considered normal, which has the blessing of the church and the support of the state. Several studies concerning how men's ascendancy is institutionalized, enacted, and embodied are cited, and attention is also given to how masculinity has been changing since World War II. In the last chapter , titled 'Reclaiming the language' (215-34), T reviews sexism in English and gives examples as to how different approaches to eradicate it have fared. Each chapter is followed by references to further reading. This is a comprehensive survey ofthe recent and contemporary research on language and gender, making use of discourse analysis. [Zdenek SalzMANN , Northern Arizona University.] Language wars and linguistic politics. By Louis-Jean Calvet. Translated by Michel Petheram. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi, 212. This is a translation of Guerre des langues et les politiques linguistiques, published in 1987; the author is a professor of linguistics at the Sorbonne. His goal was to discuss and illustrate how economic, religious, territorial, and other conflicts tend to be projected onto language differences. Calvet is to be commended for the richness of his examples, which range from ancient Greek to the contemporary languages of Niger and span five continents. The book consists of three parts: "The ongins of conflict' (1-51), 'The battlefield' (53-110), and 'Among the administrators' (111-201). In Part 1, C briefly takes up the main hypotheses concerning the origin of language and the period in human prehistory during which it may have occurred. But as much as the development of language must have facilitated the growth of culture, it placed even the earliest human beings in a 'situation of continual semiological conflict' (15). Ifthere had been only one language in the world, there would have been fewer wars or, as C puts it, 'At the origin of the conflict lies the multilingualism ofthe planet. It is not the only reason for the war but it is a necessary condition' (17). The biblical account of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues is the linguistic equivalent ofbalkanization , the breakup of a region or group into smaller and often hostile units. The same language may symbolize quite contrary social relationships: In Mali, Bambara is viewed as a language of liberation vis- à-vis French, but it is considered a language of oppression by the Songhai of the Malian city ofTimbuktu . In Part 2, C illustrates the conflicts engendered by two opposite tendencies—the tendency toward using a lingua franca to increase the speakers' communicative range on the one hand, and on the other the tendency toward using a language or dialect of a region or group to stress and enhance ethnic or other particularity. Among the many examples C offers is multilingualism in families in which the spouses' first languages are not the same and in states that are multiethnic. This part concludes with a chapter titled "The death of languages' (100-10). The case of Quechua in the Bolivian town of Cochabamba and its environs serves as an example: one variant...
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