Content area
Full Text
Peter Garrett, Nikolas Coupland, and Angie Williams, INVESTIGATING LANGUAGE ATTITUDES: SOCIAL MEANINGS OF DIALECT, ETHNICITY AND PERFORMANCE. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003, pp. 251, $79.95 hardcover, ISBN: 0708318037.
This volume is valuable reading for persons interested in language attitudes and message effects. Indeed, it is the first book-length treatment of language attitudes for many years. Its ultimate focus is on the authors' own research on adolescent and teacher attitudes toward varieties of Welsh-English. The book is premised on the fact that most previous studies have embraced only one or another method while the authors' approach is, laudably, multimethod.
The first three chapters review the literature emphasizing methodology, in general, and Welsh studies, in particular. The matched-guise technique comes under particular scrutiny and perhaps a little harshly given that its valued features (e.g., experimental control, use of authentic code-switchers) have been defended many times over the years (e.g., Giles & Bourhis, 1973). Throughout the book, past studies of Welsh accents are caricatured as ambiguous and inconsistent: a seemingly unnecessary launching pad for the authors' own innovative work. That aside, the critique is provocative and engaging for the most seasoned of scholars in the area as well as the novice. Lamentably, no initial chapter was devoted to the history, culture, and language of Wales. This omission was a lost opportunity as the naive reader must grasp at allusions to such information as the book unfolds.
After a cogent chapter outlining the...