Review of Mühlhäusler (1995): Linguistic ecology: Language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region

Abstract

This book is the first in a new series entitled The Politics of Language, which, as a statement attached to that title says, "covers the field of language and cultural theory and will publish radical and innovative studies in this area." M.'s book certainly fits this characterization. It merits an extensive sociolinguistic review and perhaps even more one from the point of view of sociology, a field which has for some time been going through the upheavals of the "cultural studies" paradigm, which in its turn has roots in, and is serving as perspective for, postmodernist approaches. For example, M.'s claim that monolingual societies are almost inevitably harmful to linguistic ecology is interestingly parallel to Certeau's (1974Certeau's ( /1998 idea that monocultural communities are inevitably repressive, or Bourdieu's (1982Bourdieu's ( /1997 thesis that national language policies have long been instruments of political power.From a linguist's point of view, the book will come across as an attempt to present a perspective rather different from the "structural" and other