Colin H. Williams

The mapping of language in North America and the British Isles

Language is a subject that has seriously concerned only a handful of Englishspeaking geographers (Wagner, 1958; Trudgill, 1975). The situation may be understandable, but it is also regrettable. The geography of language is so intimately interwoven with political, ethnic, religious and a variety of other social phenomena, and with the geography of population and communications, and even certain aspects of the physical habitat, that we cannot fully understand any of these non-linguistic topics without giving the linguistic its due. Indeed, in a most fundamental sense, we cannot begin to understand the nature and dynamics of human society without coming to terms with the central role of communications and, more immediately, the ways in which our minds, singly and collectively, dwell within a fearfully complex enveloping cocoon of language. This is not the occasion for a comprehensive review of the geographic study of language, but two reasons for its relative neglect are clear enough. As is also the case for other cultural and social items, geographers have been slow to recognize the true significance of whatever may be relatively inconspicuous in the visible landscape. Moreover, in this instance, problems of data and methodology are particularly daunting. The bulk of our place-specific information comes from

Book Reviews : Bilingual Mothers in Wales and the Language of their Children G. Harrison, W. Bellin and B. Piette. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1981. Pp. xi + 87. £5.00 (paper)

Finally, to accentuate again the unusual broadness and depth of McQuown, I call attention to his essay entitled International language (reprinted from Encyclopedia Britannica). While the topic of Esperanto (and other constructed languages, intended to serve as ’interlanguages’) appears taboo to most American linguists, McQuown has no trepidation here, and delivers a sound, concise overview of the matter. All in all, McQuown is an admirable linguistic/ anthropological scholar whose approach is truly interdisciplinary, and whose vision is enlightened and humanistic. Anwar Dil is to be complimented for a task well done.

Book Review: The antiquity of nations

world war. If widespread panic was averted because the populations of the countries affected were, in effect, under military rule, then a repeat of this epidemic not in wartime could be far more devastating than even this disease was. All these questions are of great current interest given recent outbreaks of various news strains of influenza and the mass slaughter of animal populations in the far east to contain any spread of new diseases to humans. There may simply not be enough information to answer these questions, nor to describe in more detail the spread of the disease outside of the English-speaking world. But it is odd to me at least that just 41 pages, less than 5%, of this book should be devoted to the most devastating war epidemic of all. Perhaps if the book were not so long and allencompassing I would not be concerned about ‘only’ 41 pages on influenza. Perhaps I am biased, as this is the epidemic most likely to have affected me – had any of my four grandparents succumbed in their childhood I would not be writing this. Of past epidemics to fear most, 1918/19 ranks first and is too easily forgotten by the survivors. This is not an easy book to read and is clearly not meant to be read cover to cover. But it is a masterpiece of academic study and a vital record of the devastating effects of war on human populations through war’s ability to create, incubate, spread, and worsen the effects of disease far beyond the effects of war itself. Although the book is dedicated to peace, its authors end by suggesting that: ‘War-associated disease, like the poor, is likely always to be with us’ (p. 731). Given the rapid growth of wars and war-related deaths worldwide in recent decades, the huge rise in international travel and the spread of diseases in general, the size of the human population in general and its enhanced susceptibility to disease as a result of its growth, and that the polarization of resources in the world between rich and poor which means that most are increasingly ill equipped to cope with the consequences of epidemic, if war and its associated diseases continue to multiply much longer there will at some point be far fewer of ‘us’ for it to be with. Like the diseases associated with poverty, war and disease will be with us for as long as we choose to foster and maintain them. The sooner we learn that poverty and war threaten all our futures the better chance we all have of not having to learn these lessons the hard and often fatal way. This book is a major step in our learning of how to live.

Book reviews: Keating, M. 1989: State and regional nationalism: territorial politics andthe European state. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. viii + 273 pp. £30.00 cloth

common language with ecology through the development of an economics based upon the entropy relations of resource use to the proposals to put a price on everything in some sort of apotheosis of capitalism. Given, too, the propensity for rapid change in favour of learning the truth which the events of late 1989 showed us, I would have enjoyed a more trenchant assessment of the more radical alternative futures.