oral skills achieved a new stature in the taught syllabus they hitherto never

had. On the negative side, the oral task was anxiety-provoking, and was

said to narrow the scope of instruction through reduced time for instruction

in other skills.

As an introduction to the theme of washback, this edited volume is bound

to be a useful addition to the literature in the field of language assessment.

Washback in Language Testing provides applied linguists an interesting sample

of different contexts in which language tests have been used to induce

educational reforms. The eleven chapters in this volume employ a wide

range of research methods useful for assessing the effects of washback on

language teachers and learners. The research methods used, however, tend

to focus on participants’ opinions about washback effects, with surprisingly

little scrutiny given to the analysis of actual outcomes. Given the fact that

policy makers tend to focus on outcomes more than perceptions of success,

this omission is a minor fault in an otherwise valuable volume.

Final version received May 2005

Reviewed by Steven J. Ross

Kwansei Gakuin, Kobe-Sanda, Japan

doi:10.1093/applin/ami015

REFERENCES

Ladd, H. F. and E. B. Fiske. 2003. ‘Does competition improve teaching and learning? Evidence from

New Zealand,’ Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25/1: 97–112.

Slavin, R. E. 2003. ‘Evidence-based educational policies: Transforming educational practice and research,’

Educational Researcher 31: 15–21.

Spada, N. and M. Frohlich. 1995. COLT Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching Observation

Scheme, Coding Conventions and Applications. Sydney, NSW. Macquarie University: National Center for

English Language Teaching and Research.

Swanson, C. B. and D. E. Stevenson. 2002. ‘Standards-based reforms in practice: Evidence on state

policy and classroom instruction from the NAEP state assessments,’ Educational Evaluation and Policy

Analysis 24/1: 1–27.

Paul Chilton: ANALYSING POLITICAL DISCOURSE:

THEORY AND PRACTICE. Routledge, 2004.

Paul Bayley (ed.): CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON

PARLIAMENTARY DISCOURSE. John Benjamins, 2004.

As the writers of both Analysing Political Discourse and Cross-Cultural Perspectives

on Parliamentary Discourse point out, there is a crucial, if still unclear,

relationship between language and politics, even though the study of

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political discourse dates back to the western classical tradition of rhetoric.

Although ‘politics is very largely the use of language’ (Chilton, p. 14), as

is law, it is difficult to claim that there is a specific entity which can be

identified either as the language of politics or as the theory of language and

politics. Hence, it is much to be welcomed that both of these books, in

very different ways, make a substantial and useful contribution to clarifying

that relationship, with only a small overlap in content. The contributors to

Bayley’s book focus specifically on parliamentary talk as a sub-genre of

political language, and his book has a strong (and commendable) cross-

cultural component, while Chilton attempts to analyse (and integrate) the

theory and practice of political discourse in new ways. Chilton’s book also

contains a chapter on parliamentary discourse. Both volumes also make

use of a very substantial amount of real language data, most of which is

relatively recent and from interactive political contexts, although Chilton

includes a number of political set speeches. Indeed, one of the strengths of

both books is that they contain a great deal of fascinating data, most of

which is in the public domain. It is perhaps also only fair to mention (as the

writers themselves do) that both books have a clear Anglo-bias in terms of

the texts they draw on, although both attempt to justify and redress this bias

in different ways.

There are also some common theoretical and methodological approaches

in these two volumes, although their differences in approach and focus are

probably greater and more significant than what they have in common.

Indeed, van Dijk’s chapter in Bayley’s book, having criticized systemic

functionalist linguistics for its ‘anti-mentalist’ stance, argues that any theory

of context must also include cognitive categories and that not only do people

have mutual ‘knowledge models’ of each other’s knowledge but that such

models control in a crucial way many of the discursive strategies they

make use of. Van Dijk further argues that ‘one of the theoretical problems

of the rejection of cognitive accounts is that there is no theoretical interface

between the language system or social language use [ . . . ] actual text and

talk of individual language users’ (Bayley, p. 346). Rectifying this situation

might be said to be one of the primary aims of Paul Chilton’s Analysing

Political Discourse.

In his final chapter, ‘Towards a theory of language and politics’, Chilton

describes his aim as posing questions ‘for further investigations into

language, the human mind and political discourse’ (p. 200). What he has

tried to do in the book ‘is to move the debate towards a linguistic and rather

more broadly a cognitive theory of language and politics, one that will take

account of the most probing speculations on semantics, pragmatics, evolution

and discourse processing’ (p. xi). This is an extremely ambitious programme,

and as the writer admits in his concluding chapter, he has probably raised

more questions than he has answered. The result is a book which will

probably appeal more to linguists than to political scientists but which

does indeed pose some stimulating and challenging answers, even if the

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author’s ‘platform’, that is ‘that language and political behaviour can be

thought of as based on the cognitive endowments of the human mind

rather than as social practice’ (p. 28) seems to me to overstate the cognitive

component. Surely the relationship between language and political

behaviour can only be understood in relationship to both the cognitive

and the social; the two are not mutually exclusive, nor can they usefully be

viewed as somehow in opposition to one another. Indeed, the next principle

in his platform strongly suggests this: ‘that language and social behaviour

are closely intertwined’ (p. 29).

The structure of the book comprises a theoretical groundwork (first four

chapters), followed by a series of chapters (5 through to 10) which consist

of detailed analyses of particular texts which are in some sense political.

A number of these are taken from the domestic (UK) arena; others are from

a ‘global arena’. All of these texts are analysed in detail, after fairly brief

contextualization, drawing on the theoretical material put forward in the

first four chapters. A final chapter offers some concluding thoughts.

One of the difficulties in putting forward a theory of language and politics

is that of defining exactly what counts as political language. This clearly

cannot simply be confined to the language of politicians (cf. van Dijk 1997).

Chilton recognizes this problem initially but the most explicit definition he

poses, that ‘political discourse is the use of language in ways that humans,

being political animals, tend to recognise as ‘‘political’’ ’ (p. 200), offers the

reader little help in distinguishing political discourse as a specific generic

form or establishing its boundaries. It is interesting to note that in fact

all of the texts that Chilton examines in detail are spoken by politicians,

except for a police tape of young males and data by Osama bin Laden,

although one well could argue that the latter is certainly a political figure,

if not a politician. The conversation between the young males does link

up nicely with a speech by Enoch Powell and exemplifies overtly racist talk.

Chilton also insightfully points out the ‘legitimation’ strategies that the

young males exercise in their talk. These parallel those employed in much

more sophisticated ways by politicians, including Enoch Powell himself.

But the question of what counts as political language is, in my view,

not ultimately resolved by the list of very broad properties which follow

Chilton’s definition.

The application of Chilton’s theoretical framework of political discourse

to a series of diverse texts is both revealing and interesting. As he states

himself, the interactive component of the theory, drawing on pragmatics and

the theories of Grice and Habermas, is particularly useful when analysing

political interviews and parliamentary debates. ‘Comparing the cognitive

content of parliamentary ‘‘questions’’ with their interactive components

suggests that the latter are predominant’ (p. 109), and much the same

applies to the political interview. Chilton’s explication and application of

Habermas’s validity claims, so often referred to deferentially in the now vast

literature on social theory but very seldom applied to real language use

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(certainly Habermas himself does not do this), is convincing and perceptive,

particularly his interpretation of Habermas’s concept of ‘rightness’.

In his chapter on ‘Representation’ Chilton proposes that ‘in processing any

discourse people ‘‘position’’ other entities in their ‘‘world’’ by ‘‘positioning’’

these entities in relation to themselves along (at least) three axes, space, time

and modality’ (p. 57), and Chapter 4 offers an explication of how these

axes interact. Their interaction is particularly relevant to the texts explored

under what Chilton calls the global arena. ‘Our purpose was to show how

language-in-use is anchored in spatial, temporal and modal dimensions

defined in relation to the speaker’ (p. 152) He goes on to say that ‘if that has

indeed been shown, then the result is relevant to the operation of discourse

of many, perhaps all kinds’ (p. 152), which is almost certainly the case.

However, Chilton then argues that even if the cognitive component of his

theory has general applicability to a wide range of generic types of discourse,

what is more interesting in terms of the relationship between language and

politics is ‘that political discourse in particular might well have a distinctive

tendency to invoke spatial representations’, since it almost always ‘has to do

with defending territory and forcefully entering someone else’s will involve

spatial representations.’ (p. 152). Chapters 8 to 10 elaborate the spatial

metaphors and other types of representation in the political speeches of

Clinton, Bush, and bin Laden. Here Chilton insightfully attempts to examine

the interface between the cognitive and the social, the individual speaker

and the group identity in ways which are controversial as well as complex.

Analysing Political Discourse is, thus, a thought-provoking and deeply

reflective book, which, not least, explores in detail some fascinating and

politically significant texts. I found Chilton’s book perceptive, challenging

and controversial, even at the several points where I disagreed with his

interpretation. It should appeal to a wide range of academics and students

interested in both language and politics, although readers whose interest is

mainly in politics may find some of the detailed applications of linguistic

theory taxing (the very small typeface is not helpful). However, the book is

coherently structured, and its main arguments are developed and pursued

with both clarity and style.

Paul Bayley’s edited volume has, in certain ways, more modest aims than

Chilton’s book, both in terms of its focus on a generic sub-set of political

language and its approach to methodology. The editor defines the general

objective of the volume as ‘investigating how parliamentary language in

liberal democracies can be analysed from the point of view of functional

linguistics, and whether such analysis can give us insights into political

behaviour’ (p. 6). The study of parliamentary discourse has many fewer

antecedents than political discourse, and the literature associated with the

field is relatively recent, although much helped by the accessibility of the

proceedings of many western European parliaments on the internet as well

as a limited number of dedicated television channels. This, along with the

print versions of official proceedings, has not only stimulated the study

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of parliamentary debates but also encouraged cross-cultural comparisons

(see Wodak and van Dijk 2000). Bayley identifies several potential

weaknesses which relate both to his focus and the selection of material by

the various contributors: (1) the book concentrates only on parliamentary

debates rather than other more mundane but important manifestations

of parliamentary discourse; (2) the analyses in the various chapters are

based on official transcripts, which may misrepresent the ‘spokeness’ of a

parliamentary debate (it is difficult to understand why the numerous

contributors who analyse House of Commons debates in this volume did not

apparently make use of the televised material, as Paul Chilton did in his

chapter on parliamentary discourse); (3) the selection of debates may be

seen as Eurocentric, even Anglocentric. The final point is the most significant

one, in that of the nine chapters which follow Bayley’s very useful

introduction, only two do not draw on data from the British parliament.

As a consequence, British parliamentary discourse is compared to that in

Sweden, Italy (three chapters), Germany and Spain; van Dijk also draws

primarily on British data to illustrate his theory of context. This does, in my

view, limit the range of the cross-cultural perspective, although within this

perspective, the comparisons are illuminating and interesting.

The theoretical underpinnings of the volume (referred to as methodologies

by Bayley) are made explicit in drawing on three distinct research traditions:

critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics, and corpus

linguistics, although all come within the general description of functional

linguistics. Certainly, most contributors do adopt one or more of these

approaches, but other approaches also surface. For example, Ilie locates her

approach at the interface between rhetoric, discourse analysis, and cognitive

linguistics, along with an element of politeness theory. Another example

is van Dijk’s proposed contextual approach, already referred to above. The

content of the volume is structured as follows: the chapters by Ilie and

Bevitori present comparative analyses of the interactional norms of

parliaments (Swedish/British and Italian/British) and how they may be

breached; the next four chapters (Vasta; Dibattista; Bayley, Bevitori and

Zoni; Bayley and San Vicente) provide comparative analyses of debates

on specific political issues, making substantial use of corpus linguistics

(British/Italian, British/Spanish, British/German); and the final three authors

(Miller; Carbo; van Dijk) deal mainly with questions of methodology,

although each includes an illustrative parliamentary text (USA, Mexico, and

the UK respectively). Bayley’s introductory chapter provides an overview

of the content of the book, its theoretical underpinnings, along with an

attempt to define the characteristics of parliamentary language and a useful

bibliography.

One of the strengths of the volume is, in my view, its cross-cultural

comparison, which does in an important sense attempt to combine micro

levels of analysis with macro structural categories. Real differences emerge,

for example, between what are characterized as ‘threats’ or ‘fears’ in the

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British, Italian, and German parliamentary debates, especially in relationship

to the European Union itself. In addition, the analysis of similar texts in

different languages enables us to see how different languages share the same

semantic resources and yet grammaticalize them differently (p. 231). Perhaps

surprisingly, the two chapters which are concerned with parliamentary

discourse outside Europe and do not have a comparative component are

among the most interesting but also the least accessible, especially for a non-

linguist reader. In Miller’s chapter, the emphasis on theory tends to detract

from rather than enhance the clarity of her argument. Carbo’s chapter

adds an historical dimension but only provides an illustrative example in

the last few pages. Both articles assume a greater degree of contextual

knowledge than many readers will be able to supply.

In summary, both volumes in very different ways contribute substantially

to the field of political discourse, however broadly or narrowly defined.

In part, this is because both books analyse in detail some stimulating

material, most of which is in the public domain but is brought together and

juxtaposed in new and challenging ways. Analysing Political Discourse, in

particular, provides a kind of culmination of Chilton’s longstanding interest

in the relationship between language and politics and deserves a wide

readership for its theoretical insights, lucidity of expression, and relevance

to the world of contemporary political discourse.

Final version received April 2005

Reviewed by Sandra Harris

Nottingham Trent University, UK

doi:10.1093/applin/ami016

REFERENCES

van Dijk, T. 1997. ‘What is political discourse analysis?’ Belgian Journal of Linguistics 11: 53–67.

Wodak, R. and T. Van Dijk. (eds) 2000. Racism at the Top: Parliamentary Discourse on Ethnic Issues in

Six European States. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag.

Paula G. Rubel and Abraham Rosman: TRANSLATING CULTURES.

Berg, 2003.

Michael Cronin: TRANSLATION AND GLOBALIZATION.

Routledge, 2003.

Translating Cultures and Translation and Globalization are two volumes which

unknowingly enter into a dialogue with one another. In Translation

and Globalization, Michael Cronin calls upon translators to adopt the

ethnographer’s way of ‘understanding a mindset other than one’s own’

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