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for typicalness and consensus. If we speak of “normal conversation,” we are forced to recog- nize classroom discourse 2 s deviant. If there is a typical classroom discourse, what other ideal types of talk are there and how are their inter- relations to be described?

The professed goal of these studies is to develop a “tight” linguistic sociology with “for- mal accuracy” based on a “principled” source of data. This means that in the series of transla- tions which constitutes research of any sort, the final description, itself an interpretation, must be mathematically precise in its mode of iterating essential features and their dimen- sions, reproducible by and comprehensible to any other investigator, and not a reflection of the common sensibilities of an individual researcher. Sound impossible? How does one suppress the interpretive reflex that as a human, or as an English speaker, or as a Briton, one knows what is going on? Or decline to include that in one’s description? Edwards, addressing this question, remarks that often we end up with “the image rather than the reality of a proof’ (p. 296).

This sounds a bit like the Hinckley verdict. These writers may be guilty of telling us their native intuitions as part of their data, but they have a good excuse: at least they pay attention to context, both interactional and, to a lesser degree, sociocultural. Whether the specific ap- proach is from the “action” (i.e., strategic) or competence perspective, the proposed models attempt to outline “basic systems of discourse” using universal descriptive categories such as “initiate,” “demand,” “goods/services,” etc. It is agreed that at the level of discourse, unlike that of grammar, extralinguistic, situational in- formation enters into the structure of commu- nication, just as Hinckley’s class background and the identity of his target entered into the verdict at his trial.

The profusion of labeling and hierarchical types, the tendency to view all conversations as routines, and the abstract level of the bulk of discussion make the “members” (i.e., children and adults) in these articles seem mechanical, as indeed the models mainly are. This is despite the fact that the level of the discourse is that of the structuring, tactical, reciprocal, relational nature of personal communications. This is because the concern is not with what people say, but in what order and form. Meaning here is more a question of moves, a syntax of discourse, than of semantics and pragmatics.

For anthropologists, there is no cross-

cultural, comparative interest to the work, although this possibility is implicit in the preten- sions to universality of the models. In fact, there are only a handful of references to culture. Hermeneutics, a relevant field, is mentioned once, and one semiotician is referred to. Hence, there is a kind of de facto endogamy in the nar- rowness of scope of inquiry and reference.

Discourse and textual analysis can be methods to decipher human mind and rela- tions. The “rules” we can deduce from repeti- tions in communicative patterning, the design elements whose presence or absence is cor- relative to other such suspected elements, the order that is immanent to the text and obvious to the actors but problematical to the observer, all of these and their description are not the end of the game. Adult-Child Conuersution is fully in the spirit of standing back from the tree to view the forest, but cannot do so at this stage of research because of being caught up in the branches.

Roots of Language. Derek Bickerton. Ann Ar- bor: Karoma, 1981. xiii + 351 pp. n.p. (cloth).

David Dwyer Michigan State University

In Roots of Language, Bickerton puts forth his version of an innateness hypothesis for human language, claiming that humans are en- dowed with “the capacity to produce a par- ticular, highly specified language given some (perhaps quite minimal) triggering in the form of communal language use.” In the process of supporting this view, Bickerton brings evidence to bear on the issue of language origins from the field of pidgins and Creoles (in which he is a distinguished authority) and from the study of child language acquisition. In this process, Bickerton demonstrates a link between these three peripheral fields of linguistic endeavor generally felt to be unrelated and outside the domain of legitimate linguistics. Bickerton argues that this link exists because “this capacity (for language) had attained the level of contem- porary Creoles when the computational powers it bestowed on its owners triggered the cultural explosion of the last ten millennia. . . .” This more basic language, he argues, may not ap- pear in natural adult languages which have been further elaborated but will show up in situations where these more elaborate varieties

194 A M E R I C A N A N THR OPO L OGIST [85, 19831

are absent, as in the case of pidgin/creole for- mation and even child langauge. Although Bickerton does not use the analogy, it appears to be closely aligned with the situation involving certain type of birds which when deprived of hearing the songs of the species will fall back on a more primitive set of songs.

In the origins chapter, Bickerton makes a strong case for the survival value of many features of the “bioprogram” that he has pro- posed, including the tense-mode-aspect system and the article system, leading one to suspect that the bioprogram may not be language specific but part of general human or even primate intelligence and that these general abilities would both enable and constrain our language. However, Bickerton makes it clear that while he has used these examples for demonstrative purposes, he believes that there are language-specific aspects of the bioprogram and that our species, as the second quote above asserts, has been endowed with a genetically en- coded primeval language capacity.

But it is precisely this claim of a genetically inherited language-specific primordial language, complete with a subject-verb-object word order where Bickerton shifts from a tightly argued style to a looser, more speculative mode. Up to this point, he has argued persuasively for the existence of specific characteristics of the human mental apparatus which account for the reported phenomena in pidgins and Creoles and child language acquisition. My objection to this phase isn’t so much a lack of evidence or the causal reinterpretion of other findings (such as Givon’s claim of an original SVO word order [p. 2921). but rather the lack of an argument that such a fully specified language is really necessary. Pidgins do not originate in vacuums, but are developed by individuals who have been exposed to at least one natural adult language (though not necessarily the same one). The same is true for children working on an adult language. Thus, while the individuals involved in the process of inventing a pidgin language may not use the specific features of an adult language, they do understand the communica- tive potentials of human language and that they are capable of it. This situation seems quite dif- ferent from that of language origins (or for that matter feral children) where the capacity for human language was extant but the knowledge of its potential was not.

Yet the shift in style in the origins chapter is not wholely unwelcome, for given the paucity of data in this realm we must rely more heavily on

insight and intuition rather than on tightly ar- gued reasoning if we are ever to move beyond our current understanding. In this regard many of Bickerton’s provocative insights may lead to our better understanding of language. He ques- tions the widely held belief that “all existing languages are at the same level of develop- ment,” whether the dividing line between humans and other animals is that of the presence of a soul (or something like it), he argues that maybe we all have souls. In fact, most of the value of the origins chapter involves a critical review of many of the seemingly cor- rect assumptions which have inhibited our ap- preciation of the question of language origins. My one complaint along these lines was not the occasional digression but the bringing up of what appears to be an important point, such as the incipient critique of Sassurian-Chomskian structuralism (pp. 184-185). but not following it through. This is unfortunate, given that others including Giddens (1978) have shown that this structuralist perspective inhibits our understanding of the operation of language in society. One would hope that after introducing it, Bickerton would make more of this point by showing for example how a dialectical perspec- tive might be more revealing than a structural one.

Although Bickerton has broken away from some of the restrictions of existing thought, there are a number that remain. Among these is the fact that there is an important correlation between the degree of social organization of a species and the sophistication of its means of communication. Thus, while Bickerton argues for survival value in individuals he does not bring in the importance of communication to the society in which they are members. Also, in a presentation which emphasizes the impor- tance of biogenetic adaptation, the issues of the evolution of upright posture and subsequent evolution of brain size, vocal tract evolution, and the structure and evolution of language, specific areas of the brain are never raised or too easily dismissed. And while Bickerton does go beyond the simple question of “Has X got language or not?” to “How far has X come along the road to language specifically, which of the necessary prerequisites does he or she have, and which is still lacking?”, we need to ask the more penetrating question: “How do we characterize X’s system of communication?”

The criticisms offered in the above paragraph however should be viewed as further evidence that Roots of Language should be taken as an

LINGUISTICS 195

important work and one which will provide students of language with a number of new in- sights to further our understanding of language.

On Narrative. W. J . T. Mztchell, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. x + 270 pp. $7.95 (paper).

Michael Herzfeld Indiana University

This richly argumentative collection of sym- posium papers, augmented by critical post- scripts, foregrounds the major issues in nar- rative theory today. Anthropologists will never- theless be surprised to discover intimations of their own marginality in relation to the current expansion of narratology. Does the absence of any direct reference to Lkvi-Strauss, in a volume otherwise suffused with the structuralist prob- lematic, suggest some radical epistemological shift? Or does it instead invite us to treat the book as an ethnographic object, inasmuch as it largely lacks the intense relativism of most an- thropological discourse? Certainly, with the ex- ception of Victor Turner’s scrupulous attention to the cultural context of genre terminology (pp. 142- 145), Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s refusal to preconceive the treatment of tem- porality by nonliterate narrators (p . 223), and Marilyn Robinson Waldman’s critique of Hayden White’s “Europocentric” historiog- raphy, most of the essays betray some degree of cultural parochialism. By arrogating to them- selves the privilege of defining narrativity, the contributors may have unduly restricted the scope of their enterprise; in particular, many of them miss the chance to document the role of culturally specific, embedded concepts of nar- rativity in the shaping of actual texts.

Within these margins, their collective achievement is still impressive. A unifying theme is the relationship between temporal and narrative sequence. White provocatively argues that medieval annals represent connexity in the succession of years, rather than in causal links between actual events. In rejoinder to Louis 0. Mink, he stresses the public (i.e., cultural) character of the annalists’ writings, arguing in effect that they encode a conventional rather than personal sense of history. The White- Mink- Waldman debate is anthropologically germane, in that it points up the difficulty of disengaging cultural presuppositions about the nature of time from textual conventions. In a

narrower compass but with equally compelling discussion, Frank Kermode shows how the “commonsense” reading of a novel may conflict with backgrounded messages about the author’s deeper concerns-a reversal, if you will, of the backgrounding which Mary Douglas has taught us to recognize in culturally determinate com- mon sense. The tension between cultural logic and fecund disruption emerges more strongly in several other essays: Jacques Derrida’s critique of the concept of genre, Ursula K. Le Guin’s im- aginative play on the symposium theme itself, Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of the reciprocity be- tween temporal and narrative sequence, Nelson Goodman’s analysis of visually twisted temporal tales, and Robert Scholes’ account of the semiotic mediation of actuality through nar- rative.

A lucid illustration of the premise that nar- rative mediates the experience of time is provid- ed by Roy Schafer’s “postpositivist” exegesis of psychoanalytic discourse. Narrative closure creates a sense of completed past; despite the editor’s gloss on White’s essay (p. viii), however, this does not automatically place it at the service of moral orthodoxy. All narrative closure is ad hoc, and capable, as Smith stresses, of constant renegotiation. But Smith’s performative ap- proach, particularly where it is placed in sym- bolic opposition to Seymour Chatman’s struc- turalist dualism of deep and surface structure, reveals an ironical - and epistemological - dual- ism of its own. By contrast, Paul Hernadi’s treatment of narrative as a dialectic between self-assertion and self-transcendence (p. 199) seems to invoke the possibility of a semiotic com- promise between formal structure and per- formative event. To judge from the book, this seems to have been both the goal and the experience of its engagingly disputatious nar- ratologists, and anthropologists will find a great deal in it to match their own professional preoc- cupations.

Universals of Human Thought: Some African Evidence. Barbara Lloyd and John Gay, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. xxiii + 273 pp. $47.50 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Carol R. Ember Hunter College, City University of New York

This volume developed from a conference held by the African Studies Centre at the