Language in its social setting

William A. Stewart's "Acculturative Processes and the Language of the American Negro," which comprises over a third of the volume, examines how the theories of black people's relationships to American whites have influenced the interpretation of black linguistic acculturation; his perspective is known as the creole hypothesis. Karl Reisman's chapter on "Noise and Order" examines the terms for noise as they reveal attitudes toward speech in parts of West Africa & Afro-America. Edgar A. Gregersen's essay, "The Signaling of Social Distance in African Languages," considers the morphological realization of the politeness continuum in some seventy African langs. Roger W. Shuy's chapter on "Sex as a Factor in Sociolinguistic Research" investigates some linguistic correlates of sex differences, using data from the total Detroit population & the black population of Detroit; in both cases Fs were found to be more sensitive than Ms to linguistic features serving as social differentiators. William Labov, in his paper on "The Art of Sounding and Signifying" studies the different aspects of the ritual exchange of verbal insult, called 'sounding', occuring within black M peer groups in south-central Harlem. This collection is the most authoritative & comprehensive work on the topic to date. D. Wurzel