<b>Language in South Africa</b> . Ed. by Rajend Mesthrie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii, 485. ISBN 0521791057. $110 (Hb).

Reviewed by: Language in South Africa ed. by Rajend Mesthrie Steven Hartman Keiser Language in South Africa. Ed. by Rajend Mesthrie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii, 485. ISBN 0521791057. $110 (Hb). This volume is the latest in a series of similarly ambitiously titled works (on the United States, British [End Page 223] Isles, Australia, and Canada). And it succeeds in its ambitions, amassing an impressive and almost encyclopedic array of articles while maintaining a sense of continuity to the venture and without sacrificing depth—a remarkable achievement. A revised and updated version of Language and social history: Studies in South African sociolinguistics (Cape Town: David Philip, 1995), the book consists of twenty-four chapters by leading South African linguists and is deftly edited by Rajend Mesthrie. It is organized into three parts: major language groupings (eight chapters, 165 pages), language contact (thirteen chapters, 236 pages), and language planning (three chapters, 56 pages). Interest is piqued already in the introduction as the editor walks readers through the ‘minefield’ of linguistic and ethnic terminology in post-apartheid South Africa (SA): native speaker, Bantu, and African, all racially charged terms that elsewhere in the world have neutral connotations. Mesthrie begins Part 1 with a review of SA history: the linguistic inputs, present-day pervasive multilingualism, and language in the 1996 constitution. The remaining chapters in Part 1 consider in more detail the major language groupings roughly in order of their arrival in the region. Anthony Traill offers dramatic examples of attrition and maintenance in individual speakers of Khoe and San languages. Readers will appreciate the correspondence sets and proposed family trees in Robert K. Herbert and Richard Bailey’s discussion of S. Bantu. Paul Rob-erge reviews evidence for the semi-creole development of Afrikaans, and Roger Lass gives a concise overview of the sociophonology of SA English. Among the significant linguistic minorities considered is SA Sign Language (by Debra Aarons and Philemon Akach)—bravo for the inclusion of visual languages in the national inventory! Part 2 focuses on language contact broadly construed, so in addition to Ralph Adendorff’s description of the pidgin Fanakolo and chapters on code switching (English and Afrikaans by Kay Mccormick; English and Zulu/Xhosa/Sotho by Sarah Slabbert and Rosalie Finlayson), there is Finlayson’s study of the rapidly disappearing linguistic custom of syllable avoidance, hlonipa, used by women as a sign of respect. Also, for scholars of world Englishes there are two studies of emergent Englishes: Rajend Mesthrie’s account of Indian SA English, and Vivian De Klerk and David Gough’s chapter on Black SA English. In Part 3, T. G. Reagan provides an overview of language-planning challenges, while Sarah Murray focuses on language in education and Kathleen Heugh looks at the difficulties in implementing constitutionally mandated multilingualism. The book is beautifully formatted: maps and charts are attractive and clear; each chapter has its own endnotes and bibliography for ease of reference. Throughout there are helpful cross-references to the other works in the volume, for example, the classification of S. Bantu languages in Ch. 3 refers to the discussion of gender-linked variation in language of respect in Ch. 14. This helps shape the self-contained chapters into a cohesive book—and leads the reader to unanticipated discoveries. There is a ten-page index at the back of the volume in three parts: names, languages, and subjects. Language in South Africa is an incomparable introduction to the ‘language mosaic’ of South Africa and a versatile reference for scholars of historical, contact, anthropological, or applied linguistics. Steven Hartman Keiser Marquette University Copyright © 2007 Linguistic Society of America

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