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Book ReviewsMatthew H. Ciscel , Luke March & Merel KeijzerPublished online: 19 Dec 2008.
To cite this article: Matthew H. Ciscel , Luke March & Merel Keijzer (2008) Book Reviews, InternationalJournal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11:3-4, 509-518, DOI: 10.1080/13670050802148830
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Book Reviews
Talk of the Nation: Language and Conflict in Romania and SlovakiaZsuzsa Csergo. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi�228. ISBN978-0-8014-4537-8 (hbk): $49.95.
When the totalitarian regimes of Central and Eastern Europe dissolved,surprisingly rapidly and relatively non-violently, the successor regimes took,for the most part, a form that both revived the ethnic nationalism that pre-datedCommunism in the region and actively sought integration into the social andeconomic institutional norms of Western Europe. For a few countries, such asHungary, large ethnic majorities meant that little conflict emerged between theprograms of national revival and Westernization. However, in many countriesin the region, sizable ethnic minorities and competition among ethnic nationalprograms led to considerable political and social conflict, and the potential forviolent confrontation, as has been most tragically played out in the formerYugoslavia. The avoidance of violence and negotiation of a political solution inother states where national policies were contested represent key issues in thestudy of post-Communist society in Europe (cf. Kolsto, 2002).
One of the most salient and outwardly contested issues among nationalgroups in the region has been language policy. In Talk of the Nation, ZsuzsaCsergo provides an impressively detailed exploration of the ethnic Hungariancontestation and re-negotiation of exclusionary language policies in post-Communist Romania and Slovakia. Arguing that the resolution of theseconflicts has come as much from the flexibility of domestic elites as from theimpact of international pressure to respect linguistic minorities, the bookpresents a richly detailed comparison of the political developments that ledfirst to ethno-linguistic conflict in the two countries and then to its resolution.Although there are a few weaknesses in the book’s content, it is highlyrecommended for its strong contribution to the study of language and politicsin post-Communist Europe.
Chapter 1, ‘Linguistic Territoriality’, briefly explores the terminology andtheories relevant to language policy issues in the region, and explains the focuson the roles of domestic elites as justified by a previous over-emphasis in theliterature on international actors. Although the reviews of language policyand regional politics are adequate, the topic of the book justifies greaterattention than is given to foundational research on language and nationalism(cf. Fishman, 1972; Le Page, 1964), and to more recent works on languageideology (cf. Jaffe, 1999; Kroskrity, 2000; Woolard, 1989). However, thisweakness is common in the writings of political scientists, such as Csergo.In fact, it reflects a common misperception of languages among politicalscientists and political actors alike, who see languages, such as Hungarian orRomanian, as concrete, given phenomena, rather than the dynamic, power-laden means of social representation and meaning construal that they are.
Chapter 2, ‘Language Sovereignty, and Cultural Reproduction’, provides acoherent and detailed background on Romania and Slovakia, layering the
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language issues within larger issues of insecurity about sovereignty, demo-cratization, and ‘domestic and international legacies’. The focus of the chapteris primarily on the early years of post-Communist transition, with only brieftangents into the deeper histories that are often salient aspects of the nationallegacies in the region. Even though this focus on recent events is somewhatjustified, a more in-depth discussion of the distant histories of the countriesmight have made the role of legacies in the current issues clearer. Chapter 3,‘Sovereignty and International Integration’, continues the exploration of recenthistory into the late 1990s and early 2000s, when collaboration betweenmoderate majority and minority elites in both countries, under the influence ofinternational pressure, particularly from the European Union, led to a numberof compromises that have brought greater stability and improved rights forminority language speakers. Both chapters are clearly written and accessible,organized with coherent sections that logically balance details of each countrywith general and comparative discussions. The image that emerges is ofpolitical contexts in which increasing stability and democratization facilitatethe inclusion of greater pluralism, especially of policies that make room forminority multilingualism.
In the next two chapters, Csergo turns her focus to the details of the twoprimary areas of language policy contention in both countries: minoritylanguage use in the public sphere and in educational institutions. The formeris the topic of Chapter 4, ‘Language and the Official Domain’. This chapterprovides a clear and well-documented exploration of policies of languageuse in government activities and official publications. Probably most relevantto the readership of this journal, however, is the discussion of languageeducation in Chapter 5, ‘Contesting Cultural Reproduction’. Key issues inboth countries include local versus national control of primary and secondaryeducation in the minority communities, and the availability of highereducation in Hungarian. While the local autonomy and separate Hungarianuniversities sought by the minority elites have remained elusive, considerableimprovements are apparent in the easing of exclusionary, nationalist policiesin both countries, allowing for a degree of local control over education andgreater opportunities for higher education in the minority language.
The final chapter, ‘Language and Democratic Competition’, includes asummary of the issues, policies, and trends in Romanian and Slovakianlanguage policy since the end of Communism, and a brief comparison to thesituation in the ex-Soviet Baltic States, as a means of illustrating the relevanceof the findings to other national contexts, particularly in Central and EasternEurope. Csergo concludes that ‘a broadly acceptable language policy incontested domains can only emerge if minority demands become an integralpart of the democratic process’ (p. 196). When the alternative is violentconfrontation or prolonged social instability, then the motivation for thedomestic elites to compromise within democratic institutions becomes evident.
Despite the book’s many strengths, including its coherent organization andrichly detailed discussions, there are also a few weaknesses worth mentioning.First and most importantly, although the author is balanced and objective inher treatment of contentious issues, the relative absence of the notion of powerfrom discussions of both historical legacy and the symbolic nature of language
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diminishes the prominence of certain key components of the political struggleover language status in both countries. The fact of historical Hungariandominance over current national majorities in both Slovakia and Romania(particularly in the Transylvania region) is not directly mentioned, eventhough it is certainly a contributing factor to majority insecurities aboutsovereignty and linguistic dominance. Similarly, there is no comparativediscussion of the well documented Hungarian minority in Austria (Gal, 1979),where Hungarian is not a symbol of past political dominance. Greaterdiscussion of the role of power, based on both legacy and language status,would have improved the accuracy and breadth of the study.
A second, less important weakness involves a couple of stylistic problemsthat probably should have been caught in the editing process. The mostdistracting is that key words and concepts sometimes remain undefined evenin the early chapters. For example, the term ‘Westphalian state model’, whichis probably clear to all political scientists, should be briefly explained for thenon-specialist. While the few specialized terms that remain undefined can bedistracting, this is not an extensive problem. The other problem is that severalquotations of other works in the text reappear in multiple chapters, often in thesame setting, giving the reader a sense of deja vu or unnecessary repetition. Anexample is the repetition of a long quotation by Greenfeld on pages 12 and 24.
These criticisms aside, the book provides a clearly written and meticulouslydetailed exploration of the struggle of Hungarian minorities in post-Commu-nist Romania and Slovakia to resist exclusionary majority national languagepolicies in the early stages of democratic reform. The ultimate relative successof these struggles reflects the apparent success of international pressure and ofdemocratic institutions in these countries. The book provides an excellent anddetailed discussion of these dynamics.
doi: 10.1080/13670050802148830 Matthew H. Ciscel
Central Connecticut State University([email protected])
References
Fishman, J.A. (1972) Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays. Rowley, MA:Newbury House.
Gal, S. (1979) Language Shift: Social Determinants of Language Change in Bilingual Austria.New York: Academic Press.
Jaffe, A. (1999) Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.
Kolsto, P. (ed) (2002) National Integration and Violent Conflict in Post-Soviet Societies: TheCases of Estonia and Moldova. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Kroskrity, P. (ed.) (2000) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Politics, and Identities. Santa Fe,NM: School of American Research Press.
Le Page, R. (1964) The National Language Question: Linguistic Problems of NewlyIndependent States. London: Oxford University Press.
Woolard, K. (1989) Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
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The Language of the Moldovans: Romania, Russia and Identity in anex-Soviet RepublicMatthew H. Ciscel. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007. Pp. xiii�171. ISBN 0-7391-1443-3 (hbk): $60.00.
Ciscel deserves admiration for striding head first into a political minefield �the thorny and contentious question of Moldovan language and identity � anddoing so always with nuance, sensitivity and tact. All of the ex-Sovietrepublics have suffered to a greater or lesser degree from an ‘identity crisis’as part of post-Soviet nation building. Nevertheless, in Moldova alone is theidentity of the titular nationality (Moldovans or Romanians?) the subject ofdaily political contestation, mobilization and instability. As an integralcomponent of the Stalinist concept of nationality, Moldova’s limba de stat(state language) has been the focus of dispute, with various constituenciesarguing that it is simply Romanian, a dialect of Romanian or a separatelanguage of mixed Latin�Slavic roots (to indicate just some of the competingconceptualizations).
Several linguists and historians have already effectively debunked thenotion of Moldovan as a separate language to Romanian (e.g. Bruchis, 1982;Deletant, 1990; Dyer, 1996). However, the most in-depth study of theMoldovan people to date (King, 2000) outlined the strong sense of Moldovandistinctiveness from Romania(ns) engendered by the two nations’ separateprocesses of national awakening. Ciscel’s work builds on and synthesisesthese earlier studies. He too argues that Moldovan and Romanian languagesare linguistically nearly identical, but (like King) reinforces the view thatpopular perceptions of both language and identity in Moldova itself arecontested, multifaceted and far more complex than commonplace ‘pro-Romanian’ or ‘pro-Russian’ stereotypes. What Ciscel brings to the debate isan explicit focus on what Moldovan citizens themselves think, elucidatedthrough a complex but illuminating series of methodologies. No one has yetattempted to do this in such length and at such detail, nor with such success.
Ciscel’s study unfolds as follows: Chapter 1 is a history of the republic ofMoldova from ancient times to present day that would benefit from somemaps but otherwise is detailed and succinct. The author draws out Moldova’straditional polyethnicity, multiculturalism and multilingualism, throughwaves of external influence (principally russification and romanization) thathave strongly affected but never entirely supplanted a long-lasting sense oflocal identity. The historical outline is introduced by the author’s participantobservation in Moldova’s capital Chisinau as a stroller or observer (using theterm flaneur derived from social theory, here moldovanized as flıneur). Thisdiscursus effectively brings the Moldovan capital vividly to life for the reader,and illustrates one of Ciscel’s central themes: Moldova as a locus for everydayuneven bilingualism, where Russian is still predominately the higher-statuslanguage, Moldovan/Romanian is still negotiating its social role and Englishusage in increasingly a complicating factor.
Chapter 2 locates the study in the context of previous work on language andidentity. The author illustrates well how social identities are sociallyconstructed, multiple and dynamic. Language and identity are inextricably
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linked, both ‘founded on ideologies related to objective economic needs,community attitudes, and overlapping markers of distinction’ (p. 59). Theauthor then proposes a multiplicity of methods to examine the complexity ofthe layers of national identity. These include questionnaires from 197 subjectsin the capital and second cities in 2001 and 2003, with a focus on six students ofEnglish in the translation program at Chisinau’s State University of Moldova.The national and linguistic identities of these students are explored throughlife histories, interview data and ‘matched guise tests’ (where respondents’reactions to bilingual subjects reading of text are used to examine socialattitudes to language).
The author is refreshingly open about the limitations of his data (inparticular the lack of representativeness caused by relatively few subjects, anda lack of geographical spread and longitudinal aspect), but makes a strong casefor the accuracy and depth of the information he accumulates. Chapter 4 isparticularly pleasing in this regard, with a thorough textual analysis of therange of social and linguistic identities present in three important print mediapublications. These publications buttress the survey data and produce fourprincipal ideal-typical identity categories (extremely pro-Romanian, moder-ately pro-Romanian, moderately pro-Russian and extremely so), which willlater be used as broad guideposts to examine the Moldovan sociolinguisticcontext. The six subjects at the core of analysis are spread across this range ofcategories.
Chapter 4 then uses the matched guise technique to reinforce and elaboratethe generalizations indicated by the four categories of social identity inconsiderable depth. There are interesting conclusions here: for instance thatRussian is still regarded as the most prestigious language by all groups; pureRomanian is regarded as far more prestigious than indigenous ‘Moldovan’ butis seen as foreign even by native speakers of Romanian/Moldovan as a firstlanguage (L1). Hence a situation of linguistic stalemate where Russian persistsas the lingua franca by default, and Romanian as yet lacks the prestige andpopular support to challenge this, despite strong feelings from severalRomanian speakers that it must do so.
Chapter 5 focuses on perceived and actual second language proficiency,above all of the principal six subjects. This chapter reinforces several insightsalready hinted at: the dominance of Russian even among Romanian/MoldovanL1 speakers, which is only now being challenged; the continued resistance toRomanian revival by Russian L1 speakers (who tend to speak Romanian farmore poorly than do Romanian/Moldovan L1 speakers, if at all), andthe emergence of English as a prestigious and uncontentious secondlanguage, particularly for Russian speakers who are unwilling/unable to learnRomanian.
This study won’t be for everyone. It can be dense and hard going at times(for example, Chapter 3 is a crucial chapter but it is often hard to follow theargument, given the number of graphs and acronyms). The author’s ownvoice can be intrusive, such as a dream sequence trope on pages 17�19 thatadds little to the narrative. The study generally succeeds in relating the
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focused in-depth linguistic study to wider issues (for example, the importantclaim that linguistic and national identities are strongly linked to position inthe social hierarchy and economic opportunities in a ‘market of identities’ onp. 142), but it sometimes pulls its punches. For example, a discussion on pp.63�66 of comparisons with other postcommunist states asserts that Moldova’slanguage and identity issues are essentially unique, but does not system-atically compare what is similar and different from other eminently compar-able cases (such as Macedonia and Croatia, where debates over whether thelocal language is a dialect or language are familiar to students of Moldova).The conclusion, at just four pages, is disappointingly short, and its assertionsthat Russia retains ‘concrete control’ over Moldova need to be qualified withacknowledgement of the changing role of both Romania and the EU in theregion (admittedly after 2003 when most of the analysis was done), whichtogether have the potential (as yet little more than that) to loosen Moscow’sstranglehold. Moreover, the idea of Moldova as convulsed by ‘an identitycrisis on a national scale’ (p. 144) needs to be unpacked � some of the evidencefrom the author’s own surveys (pp. 147�159) indicates that the population,whilst far from happy with this crisis, can tolerate multiple and contestedidentities to a far greater extent than their elites can.
Overall, in this volume, Ciscel largely succeeds in producing an intriguingin-depth study of the complexities of linguistic and national identity inMoldova, a study which illustrates the fluid and complex social constructionof categories which (as the author rightly notes) local elites tend to insist arefixed with a primordial rigidity. It does so with conviction, insight andsensitivity. Moreover, it simultaneously brings the Moldova’s people verymuch to life as intelligent and creative actors. As much of the prevailingcoverage of Moldova treats its citizens as passive victims of primordial ethnicdisputes or external power games, this book is not just an educating read, butdoes Moldova itself a great service.
doi: 10.1080/13670050802149143 Luke MarchPolitics and International Relations
University of Edinburgh([email protected])
References
Bruchis, M. (1982) One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: On the Language Policy of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union in the National Republics. Boulder: East EuropeanMonographs.
Deletant, D. (1990) Language policy and linguistic trends in Soviet Moldavia. InM. Kirkwood (ed.) Language Planning in the Soviet Union (pp. 189�216). New York:St Martin’s.
Dyer, D. (ed.) (1996) Studies in Moldovan: The History, Culture, Language and ContemporaryPolitics of the People of Moldova. Boulder: East European Monographs.
King, Ch. (2000) The Moldovans: Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture. Stanford:Hoover Institution Press.
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Language and Aging in Multilingual ContextsK. de Bot and S. Makoni. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. vi�162.ISBN 1-85359-841-0 (hbk): $99.95. ISBN 1-85359-840-2 (pbk): $39.95.
Research into language and ageing tends to adopt a decline perspective:it views old age as a stage in life where everything is somehow worse thanbefore and focuses on those aspects of language that are not in place anymore.De Bot and Makoni’s volume takes a radically different stance and treatslanguage in ageing subjects as a life-span development; language is a dynamicsystem that is constantly in flux due to internal changes, but that also changesin reaction to the environment. This may be especially true in a multilingualsetting, simply because there are more resources that can alter. Languagein ageing is therefore seen as a development, similar to language acquisition,and is not viewed as necessarily negative. As such, the volume provides arefreshing new approach to an existing research tradition.
The book can roughly be divided into two parts. The first (Chapters 1�6) istheory-oriented and presents an overview of what is known about languageand ageing from previous investigations. The Dynamic Systems Theory (DST)perspective on language and ageing adopted in this book is explicated indetail in the first six chapters. Chapters 7�9 build on the first part and presentfindings of three individual studies on language and ageing in differentmultilingual contexts.
To start with the first part, Chapter 1 introduces the topic of language andageing by asking what ageing is, a question that proves hard to answer. Withthat, it is hard to characterize the language use of the elderly and immenseindividual variation is apparent instead. A life-span development perspectiveis subsequently presented to account for these differentiations: language isconstantly changing, ‘due to changes in life, education, jobs, relationships orhobbies’ (p. 2). By extension, language is seen as inseparable from othercognitive systems like perception, memory and emotions.
With that variation in mind, Chapter 2 explores DST in more detail. Due toits origin in the natural sciences, a full application of DST in relation tolanguage is hard, but the interplay and constant competition between internaland external factors in shaping and altering a dynamic system can also beapplicable to the linguistic system. The internal resource of memory capacity,for example, is limited � especially in elderly language users. In multilingualageing subjects, this may imply that one language erodes, but these attritioneffects can be countered by an external pressure to maintain both languages ifboth are needed for successful communication with the outside world.
Chapter 3 explores the sociolinguistics of language and ageing and reviewshow elderly people are addressed (‘elderspeak’). Some aspects of elderspeak,such as a louder voice, can be beneficial for better communication, but others(like shorter sentences or a high-pitched voice) are frequently seen asdegrading and may alter elderly people’s speech due to a decline in self-esteem. Moving away from how the elderly are addressed to the language theyproduce themselves (in Chapter 4), a division is made between healthy andpathological ageing. In both types, changes in all language domains occur(phonology, the lexicon, syntax and pragmatics) and they all seem to be
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triggered by a reduced working memory and/or hearing and vision problems.Interestingly, the differences between healthy and pathological ageing appearto be largely quantitative in nature. As Dynamic Systems need resources toevolve, a change in one may have consequences for others.
In Chapter 5, six factors are discussed which may all impact on howlanguage changes with advanced age: working memory capacity and long-term memory capacity; attentional processes; speed of processing; education;the social and linguistic environment, and multilingualism. Remarkably,education appears to act as a buffer for declining memory, attention andprocessing spans: higher levels of education and related language proficiencyearly in life can partly prevent dementia at a later stage. When looking atmultilingualism and ageing, it is not clear ‘to what extent multilingualism is anasset or a liability in aging’ (p. 58), as different studies report differentoutcomes. It does seem that speaking multiple languages leads to moreadvanced metalinguistic skills, which may in turn have a positive effect onlanguage retention.
Chapter 6 focuses is on multilingualism in relation to ageing and dementiaand thus bridges theoretical Chapters 1�5 and the following data-drivenChapters 7�9. Most dementia assessment tools are geared towards mono-linguals, but the majority of the world’s population is in fact multilingual. Thechapter argues that although mono- and multilinguals use the same proces-sing mechanisms and neurophysiological structures in their speech, how theyuse these resources may be different and it is because of this that ‘a full pictureof the language skills of an individual can only be found when he or she istested in all the languages that had once been acquired’ (p. 72).
Chapters 7�9 follow this advice and present three individual studieson ageing in various multilingual settings. Traditionally, studies examiningageing have looked at white, educated, middle-class Americans, thus nece-ssarily restricting the research outcomes. Chapter 7 therefore begins with alinguistic investigation of ageing African�American populations in the Detroitarea. The tests that were administered to this group were presented in bothStandard American English (SAE) and African�American Vernacular (AAV).Language of testing did not appear to have a large effect on the outcomes.Furthermore, language performance did not necessarily decline with age; theoldest group even did better than some of the younger subjects. Finally,education was found to have an effect: those subjects with the highest scoreswere invariably those with a higher educational background.
Chapter 8 discusses the effects of age and education on narrative skills ofChinese elderly in the USA, tested in both English and Chinese. The outcomesshow that narrative complexity is not related to age, but older subjects didtend to produce more incomplete utterances, presumably as a function ofdecreased working memory. Furthermore, while story telling proved a goodassessment for subjects of all educational backgrounds, more syntacticallycomplex sentences were produced by higher educated subjects.
Finally, Chapter 9 focuses on rater judgements of the speech of elderlyAfrican�Americans, Latinos and whites in New York City. Although thisresearch project was originally an epidemiological study, the outcomes canalso be used for linguistic purposes. Five features make this research stand
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out from most other ageing projects: longitudinal design; inclusion of over2000 subjects; use of subjects from a variety of age ranges and educationalbackgrounds; examination of speech, as well as health and cognitive statusof all participants; use of trained raters to judge the subjects’ speech.Significantly, the judges had the same demographical background as theelderly subjects they rated. The most important outcome was that, contraryto expectations, the oldest subjects did not receive a poorer rating thanthe younger age groups. Moreover, no significant differences were foundin ratings for the three ethnolinguistic groups, as long as these groups wererated by judges from the same demographical population. This shows thatmultilingualism and multiculturalism play an important role in languageassessment.
Chapter 10, apart from presenting a summary of the key issues discussedin the book, stresses the importance of awareness-raising concerning proble-matic issues in ageing and multilingualism research, notably of ‘the role oflanguage in interaction with elderly subjects, the use of assessment instru-ments, the language of testing, the selection of participants and the role ofeducation’ (p. 139). Perhaps the most important conclusion the authors makeis that, despite all the unknown variables involved in language and ageing,there are three ‘universal’ statements that can be made. First, if anything hasbecome clear it is that no universally accepted definition of ageing can beformulated. There are simply too many differences between individuals andacross ethnic groups. Second, cognitive capacity is not a binary oppositionbetween good and bad, but rather a continuum. Third, it is not enough tosimply look at the language use of elderly subjects; their medical conditionalso has to be assessed.
Although the book provides a wealth of information, it does so in a ratherchaotic manner. For one, none of the chapter sections are numbered,occasionally obscuring the line of reasoning. Related to this minor drawbackis the apparent lack of attention to detail. The title on the book spine ismisspelled as Lanaguage and Aging in Multilingual Contexts and the main textalso contains numerous spelling and grammatical errors. At times, the bookalso appears to be a compilation of interesting facts about language and ageingonly, without cohesive conclusions being drawn from them. This is under-scored by the treatment of the Dynamic Systems Theory. It is almost invariablyapplied in an ad hoc fashion, attempting to explain findings from studies thatcame before. While it is certainly true � as the authors themselves indicate �that the precise configurations of DST in relation to language are yet unknown,it might have been instructive to use the insights gained from the applicationof DST to existing studies and dedicate a chapter at the end to the formulationof hypotheses to constrain and aid future work in this area. On the other hand,perhaps this does not fit well with the design of the book, which is obviouslyexploratory.
The most important shortcoming of the book, however, is the small rolereserved for multilingualism throughout this book. It is not until Chapter 6that the role of multilingualism in elderly language users is examined in detail,followed, of course, by the three empirical studies on language and ageing.Chapters 1�4, by contrast, mainly present an overview of language and ageing
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without specifically discussing ageing in multilingual subjects. Based on thebook’s title, a larger role for the multilingual elderly language user appearswarranted, not only in the data-driven chapters, but also in the theoretical onesleading up to them.
Despite these drawbacks, however, Language and Aging in MultilingualContexts provides a useful overview of language and ageing and also presentsinteresting findings from empirical studies in this area. What is more, it doesnot regard changes in the language system of elderly speakers as negativedecline, but adopts a developmental, across the life-span approach and asks:what actually becomes better with time and which resources interact to shapethe system? Language and Aging in Multilingual Contexts may therefore be thestart of an important new research tradition.
doi: 10.1080/13670050802149150 Merel KeijzerInstitute for Technology and Communication,
Delft University of Technology([email protected])
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