404 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [ 7 3 , 1 9 7 1

paper in the volume explicitly devoted to isolating trends. Inevitably, in a book on South Asian languages, there is a paper on official language policies. In this case, Das Gupta’s paper “Official Language Problems and Policies in South Asia” is less objec- tionable than most. Kachru contributes a paper on a largely neglected, but fascinating area of research, Indian English. He docu- ments the emergence of a spoken and writ- ten subvariety of English.

It is a merit of most of the papers on specific languages and language families that they not only summarize previous work, but p i n t out those areas where information is most inadequate. It is quite apparent, for example, that there is a general paucity of adequate descriptive materials for the ma- jority of non-literary languages. As many of the papers indicate, lack of a firm descriptive foundation is the most serious impediment to the development of comparative and his- torical studies. It is not, as some authors in this volume contend, that the study of South Asian languages has been behind- hand either in the development or appli- cation of modern theoretical poses, but rather that the desire to be theoretically au courant has been detrimental to descriptive studies.

Where, for example, are our descriptions of Central Dravidian languages, or of the Naga languages, or of the languages of the Cis-Himalayan tribes? With a few notable exceptions, we know as little about these languages as we did twenty years ago. Many are those who have extolled the feast of linguistic diversity in South Asia, but it is still a feast haunted by its missing guests. Useful as the present volume may be as a “summing up” or as a bibliographic exercise, I would be easier in my mind about the future of South Asian language studies, if the considerable monies extracted from various granting agencies for its publication had gone instead to support the research and publication of just one good grammar of a South Asian language.

Language Problems o f Developing Nations. JOSHUA A. FISHMAN, CHARLES A. FERGUSON, and JYOTIRINDRA DAS GUPTA, eds. New York & London: John Wiley, 1968. xv + 521 pp., figures, in-

dexes, maps, chapter notes, chapter ref- erences, tables. $12.95 (cloth).

Reviewed b y JACK BERRY Northwestern University

This book is a collection of essays by some twenty-six authors on various aspects of the language problems of developing na- tions. The authors between them represent most of the social sciences and have spe- cialist interests and experience in areas all over the world. There are essays by political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and a psychologist as well as by sociolinguists and linguists (who might think of themselves as “theoretical,” “descriptive,” or “applied”) on language problems in Europe, Africa, the Near and Middle East, India, Oceania, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The three editors have all contributed individual essays to the main sections of the work. There is almost too much of Fishman, who has four separate and quite substantial sections of the book attributed to him; Ferguson is less obtrusive but has a delightfully urbane paper on a fourteenth century applied linguist, St. Stefan of Perm, from which he draws con- clusions that are entirely relevant to the present-day problems discussed by the other contributors to the book; Das Gupta writes on language diversity and national develop- ment. In addition, the editors jointly and separately provide a useful introduction to the volume and to the subject as a whole.

Most of the essays in the book were ori- ginally presented at a conference on the language problems of the developing nations held in the United States late in 1966. A few of the papers have already appeared else- where and are reprinted here. More would undoubtedly have been published inde- pendently by their authors had there not all along been the possibility of this book. The editors and the publishers are to be con- gratulated therefore for bringing out a most interesting set of papers on a common theme that, otherwise, because of the diversity of disciplines and areal specializations involved, might have been scattered through journals appearing in many different languages and in many different parts of the world. To say this, however, is not to imply that all the papers in the book are of uniformly high standard or equal worth. Some are very good indeed, others at best are pedestrian. One at

LINGUISTICS 405

least is downright bad and should not have been retained. (The reviewer recalls better papers given at the 1966 conference which the editors have “dropped.”) The book divides about equally into “case histories” or descriptions of localized situations on the one hand and attempts at more generalized comparative and theoretical statements on the other. Some of the case histories are rather superficial but a few are very good; detailed and perceptive descriptions, they are, perhaps, the best part of the book.

Minor criticisms apart, the book is an important one and by far the best in its field. In recent years there have been a number of books devoted specifically to the language problems of new nations: for example, Spencer’s Language in Africa, Lepage’s The National Language Question, and the C.C.T.A. Symposium on Multi- lingualism. But these, for the most part, are the work of linguists. Social scientists, on the other hand, have paid little attention to language in their work on the developing nations. (Oddly, considering how many ur- gent political and social problems facing these countries are clearly language-related! ) It is the great strength of the present book that its editors (and nearly all its contrib- utors) recognize the complexity and multi- disciplinary nature of the problems they discuss. Everywhere there is an awareness of the “other” disciplines. Linguists write of the social component of language develop- ment problems, non-linguists of the language component of national development prob- lems. There seems to be fairly general opti- mism about sociolinguistics and a conviction that this field is now making and will con- tinue to make important contributions to both parent disciplines. Eventually, perhaps, the language problems of the developing nations will be best left to a new breed of scholars equipped by their training to ap- proach them in terms of total problem orientation rather than in terms of this dis- cipline or that. Whether this will prove so remains to be seen. Meanwhile sociolin- guistics has its own problems of training, theoretical systematization, and application, as this book so well demonstrates.

Fishman, incidentally, in a section on “What is Sociolinguistics?” provides a brief but excellent introduction for those not well acquainted with this rapidly developing field

of interdisciplinary research. The language problems of developing countries, of course, are only a small part of t h e total area of sociolinguistic concern but they were an early focal point of interest in the develop- ment of sociolinguistic theory and they will undoubtedly continue to provide a fertile field for the exploration of its central hy- potheses and concerns.

Finally it must be admitted that we really know very little about the role of language in nationalism and nationism; know, that is, with such certainty that we can base policy on it. For now, it is all very much a matter of hunches, speculation, and suspicions. The book, therefore, is to be judged and justified on its methodological approach rather than on any substantive findings and solutions it advances. This approach, which the editors so eloquently argue for, may well constitute our best hope of coming to theoretical grips with the wide range of problems adumbrated in the book. For this reason alone one would wish wholeheartedly to recommend the book to all social scientists, not only as an introduction to the topic of its title but to the wider field of sociolinguistics as a whole. And since linguists understandably are al- ready showing increasing interest in this field one would further wish to recommend the book especially to those other social scien- tists who are not familiar with technical lin- guistics. There are some technicalities in it, of course, but nothing that need alarm the innocent unduly. Reading the book should not prove too painful and may even provide a stimulus for the reader to re-examine his own disciplinary concerns.

Description and Measurement o f Bilin- gualism: A n International Seminar, Uni- versity of Moncton, June 6-14, 1967. L. G. KELLY, ed. Preface by D. W. Barlett. Introduction by W. F. Mackey. Ontario & Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press (published in association with Canadian National Commission for Unesco), 1969. xvii + 442 pp., figures, tables, chapter bibliographies, 3 appendices. $11.50 (cloth).

Reviewed by HELEN E. ULLRICH SUNY a t Albany

This book, edited by L. G. Kelly, con- tains papers and commentaries given at a