<b>Multilingualism in the English-speaking world.</b> By Viv Edwards. (The language library.) Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Pp ix, 253. ISBN 0631236139. $31.95.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: Multilingualism in the English-speaking world by Viv Edwards Joyce Milambiling Multilingualism in the English-speaking world. By Viv Edwards. (The language library.) Malden, MA: Black-well, 2004. Pp ix, 253. ISBN 0631236139. $31.95. In this book, Edwards has picked an intriguing topic—the use and fate of other languages in places where English dominates. E uses Braj Kachru’s system of categorizing countries in which English is spoken, focusing mainly on the ‘inner-circle’ countries, those that make up the English-speaking world of the title. These countries are the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. (The author refers to New Zealand as Aotearoa/New Zealand throughout the book.) Multilingualism in the English-speaking world is divided into three parts. Part 1, ‘The extent of diversity’, contains three sections, beginning with ‘The myth of monolingualism’. The author makes it clear that despite what she calls ‘a monolingual mindset’, the English-speaking world is now and has been in the past anything but monolingual. The remainder of the first part of this volume focuses on the origins of [End Page 458] the linguistic diversity in these countries, and which languages and to what extent services (for example, interpreting and translation) are provided. Part 2 explores the subject ‘Language at home and at school’. Home is the locus for first-language learning, including where bilinguals learn their family language(s). The author states that families who speak languages other than English in inner-circle countries ‘are involved in a cost benefit analysis’. While the costs are considerable, E sees the benefits for families as ‘far greater’ (91). The heart of this part of the book deals with language and education, starting first with a historical account and continuing with the present state of language and education in the inner-circle countries. Education is, of course, vital to the maintenance and reputation of languages. A discussion of linguistic oppression and marginalized languages, on the one hand, along with a description of community efforts to maintain minority languages, on the other, provides a balanced view of the treatment of language and education in countries where English is the principal language. The book closes with Part 3, ‘Language in the wider community’. The topics in this section vary widely and include the economy, the media, the arts, and diplomacy and defense. The last chapter in the book is entitled ‘Is life really too short to learn German?’. After considering English-only policies, court cases involving minority languages, as well as some benefits of bilingualism, the author concludes that other languages enrich rather than unnecessarily complicate life in the English-speaking world. Despite dissenting voices and some consequences of the belief that English should be uncontested in inner-circle countries, E maintains that ‘Life, it would seem, is quite long enough for us to acquire a collective knowledge of German, Chinese, Urdu, and many other languages’ (222). This book establishes multilingualism as a given in the English-speaking world, while it also describes the barriers facing multilinguals there. The author has succeeded in bringing the literatures of language diversity in these different countries together in one volume, and she has done this with clarity and a touch of humor. Joyce Milambiling University of Northern Iowa Copyright © 2007 Linguistic Society of America
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.112 | 0.059 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".