Discourse Studies http://dis.sagepub.com/ Book review: Jef Verschueren, Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research James Costa Discourse Studies 2014 16: 309 DOI: 10.1177/1461445613518868 The online version of this article can be found at: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/16/2/309 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Discourse Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://dis.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://dis.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/16/2/309.refs.html >> Version of Record - Mar 28, 2014 What is This? Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at Universitet I Oslo on April 21, 2014 518868 DIS0010.1177/1461445613518868Discourse StudiesBook reviews research-article2014 Book reviews Discourse Studies 2014, Vol. 16(2) 309–324 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461445613518868 dis.sagepub.com Jef Verschueren, Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012; xiv + 377 pp., ISBN 9781107006522, £60.00/ US$99.00 (hbk). Reviewed by: James Costa, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France Jef Verschueren’s new book is designed not only as a set of methodological guidelines, but also as a general pragmatic theory for the analysis of how ideology is expressed, reproduced or contested through language. The book is thus concerned with ideology as a general (and primarily discursive) process, rather than with language ideologies. To illustrate his point, the author analyses texts extracted from one French and 13 English school textbooks from the 19th- and 20th-century colonial era, and focuses on one particular event, the so-called Indian mutiny of 1857. The book consists of three chapters, preceded by a preface and an introduction, and followed by a conclusion. The conclusion itself is followed by two appendices: Appendix 1 recapitulates the main guidelines and instructions proposed in the book, while Appendix 2 (a hefty 166 pages) provides the reader with central portions of the texts used in the book. A comprehensive index is also provided at the end of the book. In his introduction, Verschueren explains that there is ‘a true scarcity of methodological reflections and in particular of research guidelines’ (p. 4) in the field of research on discourse and ideology – a point that I sharply experienced while working on my doctoral thesis material in the late 2000s. This volume therefore does exactly what it purports to do: it gives students of written texts theoretical and practical tools to delve into textual material (but also includes some guidelines for the analysis of spoken interaction), in search of ‘underlying patterns of meaning, frames of interpretation, world views’ (p. 7), which form part of what Verschueren calls ideology. The first two chapters are short, and they outline the theses and rules that underlie Verschueren’s proposed guidelines. Chapter 1, ‘Language Use and Ideology’, thus exposes the four main theses of the volume, namely that: 1. ‘[w]e can define as ideological any basic pattern of meaning or frame of interpretation bearing on or involved in (an) aspect(s) of social ‘‘reality’’ [. . .], felt to be commonsensical, and often functioning in a normative way’ (p. 10); Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at Universitet I Oslo on April 21, 2014 Discourse Studies 16(2) 310 2. 3. 4. ‘ideology [. . .] may be highly immune to experience and observation’ (p. 14); ideology is most saliently manifested through language use or discourse; discourses, as conveyers of ideology, may also serve to frame, validate, explain or legitimate attitudes, facts, and actions. Chapter 2, ‘Pragmatic Rules of Engagement’, proposes two initial rules for the study of textual material: Rule 1 reminds the reader to formulate ‘researchable questions, i.e., questions to which answers can be given, supported with empirical evidence and susceptible to counterscreening’ (p. 22). Rule 2 states that for aspects of meaning to count as ideological, they should ‘emerge coherently from the data, both in terms of conceptual connectedness with other aspects of meaning and in terms of patterns of recurrence or of absence’ (p. 23). Chapter 3, ‘Pragmatic Guidelines and Procedures’, is considerably longer than the first two chapters. It explains and demonstrates Verschueren’s methodology, explaining and exemplifying ‘guidelines’, ‘procedures’ and ‘caveats’. In other words, this is a stepby-step guide to investigating texts to understand their ideological foundations. The methodology brings out ideological tensions, for example, by classically analysing contradictions, assumptions and presuppositions. Appendix 1 provides a useful alternative way to use the book as a set of guidelines, by going through the various ‘Theses’, ‘Rules’, ‘Guidelines’, ‘Caveats’ and ‘Procedures’ that together form the skeleton of the book. For illustrative purposes, I reproduce a sample of this very didactic approach here: Guideline 3: The core task consists in tracing the dynamics of meaning generation in relation to issues pertaining to social structures, processes, and relations. Caveat 3.1: There are hardly any fixed form-function relationships. Hence there are no interpretations rules that can be applied mechanically. [. . .] Procedure 3.1: Define the activity type or speech event type (providing a general frame of interpretation) to which the investigated discourse belongs. In addition: 3.1.1: Identify the speech acts or language games of which the activity or event predominantly consists. (p. 203) This is clearly a major book for students and advanced scholars in pragmatics and discourse analysis. It will be equally interesting to those who engage in other social sciences such as sociolinguistics or anthropology, and who use textual material. Although very technical at times, the author does not assume the reader will be a specialist in pragmatics or discourse analysis, and each term receives a clear definition. This volume will be essential for anyone interested in the shaping, reproduction and contestation of ideology through discourse, and will be particularly helpful for students at the initial stages of their research; indeed it provides essential clues as to how to identify problematic aspects of texts that may require further investigation. The choice of textual material analysed in the book may, however, raise some questions. One may indeed argue that the case would possibly have been more conclusive had the author used a more controversial theme, such as covert racism in Belgium – a theme Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at Universitet I Oslo on April 21, 2014 Book reviews 311 he cogently explored with Jan Blommaert (Blommaert and Verschueren, 1998). In his conclusion Verschueren acknowledges that ‘[i]deological overtones are relatively easy to identify in the materials [he has] used for purposes of illustration’ (p. 195). But the reader may, because of this, remain a little frustrated. Surely the wealth of tools and analyses deserved more than: ‘If anything is clear from the cursory look at our sample data, which may be subject to further systematic scrutiny by users of this book, it is the patriotic stance taken both by Lavisse and the British sources’ (p. 194). The author makes many valid points immediately afterwards, but they concern ideology in general. And the reader may still wonder how exactly one connects textual analysis with actual ‘ideologies’, how they are identified and named beyond those generally acknowledged, and how one tackles variation in ideology. This book will thus not direct the reader as to how to establish automatic connections between discursive processes and distinct ‘ideologies’ or ideological processes. However, it does – and this is probably more important – bring together guidelines to approach discourse in a way that is aimed at uncovering and understanding the various loci where ideological processes are niched, produced and contested. Reference Blommaert J and Verschueren J (1998) Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance. London and New York: Routledge. Sigrid Norris (ed.), Multimodality in Practice: Investigating Theory-in-Practice-through-Methodology, New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012; xiv + 238 pp., £95.00 (hbk). Reviewed by: Yves Laberge, Groupe ACE, EA 1796, Université de Rennes 2, France Appearing in the ‘Routledge Studies in Multimodality’ book series, this is a collection of 13 essays plus presentations between sections. Divided into two sections of chapters, Multimodality in Practice first emphasizes social actors and their interactions (p. 3). The second part (Chapters 9–16) deals with cultural tools (such as images, but also PowerPoint observed as a case study) and communicating practices in a variety of domains, from marketing and branding to animation techniques. In her preface, Professor Sigrid Norris (from Auckland University of Technology) begins by highlighting what is common to all the essays gathered here: ‘what is new about a particular practice when investigating it through a multimodal lens’ (p. xi). Sources of inspiration are varied: Erving Goffman (see Chapter 7), Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, James Wertsch and many others (p. xii). Taking from Wertsch, Norris explains that within the mediated action framework, ‘actions are performed by social actors who are acting with or through cultural tools’ (p. xii). Although it would have been central and quite useful, multimodality is not conceptualized explicitly by all contributors. However, in Carey Jewitt’s excellent Chapter 8, ‘Technology and Reception as Multimodal Remaking’, multimodality is understood in two ways. First, multimodality can be seen as an opposition to the previous communication models which relied ‘on a stimulus-response within a behaviourist framework’ (p. 97). But Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at Universitet I Oslo on April 21, 2014