Critical reflexivity seems expedient in a robust, burgeoning field such as sociolinguistics. Assumptions, principles, and approaches nurture implicit and explicit disciplinary canonization based on our cognitive framing and background experience—and these tenets deserve to be scrutinized judiciously. In fact, I have to admit that some of my own research unwittingly contributed to the construction of a set of ‘sociolinguistic myths’ about the development and status of African American Language (Wolfram 2007) as well as some questionable assumptions about the nature of social engagement (Wolfram 1998; Wolfram, Reaser, & Vaughn 2008). I therefore welcome this critique of the principle of error correction as a theory underlying social change. The study of language in its social context is historically embedded in an ideological struggle that pits ‘popular beliefs’ against ‘expert authority’, thus making it vulnerable to overstatement and overgeneralization—by the sociolinguistic intelligentsia as well as those speaking for popular culture.

This article explores relations between transcultural processes and historical boundaries. Drawing on the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of assemblage, it examines the selection and organisation of cultural elements in a Japanese-styled Chinese New Year installation at a Hong Kong shopping mall. The article presents three affective regimes produced in this transcultural assemblage: New Year festivity, simulated tourism, and partial historicity. We argue that these regimes are regulated in the processes of erasure (the selective blockage of competing lineages of rituals, traditions, and spaces) and forgetting (the process evoking creative re-organisation of semiotic boundaries between cultural elements selected into the transcultural assemblage). This article suggests two implications. First, transculturality is not only the dialogic transgression and creation of boundaries but also the selection and regulation of cultural elements in an assemblage. Second, historical boundaries are not sidestepped but are regulated by the partial blockage through erasure and re-organisation through forgetting in affective regimes. (Transculturality, assemblage, affective regime, erasure, forgetting, Hong Kong)

Kwok-kan Tam & Timothy Weiss (eds.), English and globalization: Perspectives from Hong Kong and mainland China. Hong Kong: China University Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 276. Hb $35.00.

“Has English become the ‘cultural SARS’ and ‘king of terrorists’ for Chinese people? Are we Chinese really facing a new ‘Opium War’ against English?” ask the authors of a recently published book, The English demon (Zhu & Yang 2004), which denounces English as a new form of opium, invoking the painful image of the history of Western invasion of China. Comparing English to opium, a substance that is believed to have been used by the Western imperialists to intoxicate the Chinese people and to have caused two wars between China and Britain, is a clear indication of growing hostility toward English in China. At a time when China has just joined the World Trade Organization, has successfully competed for the opportunity to host the 2008 Olympic Games, and is rapidly growing into a powerful global economy, the hostility toward English seems puzzling. After all, English is the language for international trade and communications and thus a necessary medium for China to express its desire for globalization. Why this resentment, then?

The authors have compiled a truly impressive amount of information pertaining to bilingualism and bilingual education in this single-volume, full-color encyclopedia. Attractively produced on high-quality paper, the book contains 117 main topics, 390 text boxes, 340 pictures, 35 maps, 98 graphs, and 14 diagrams. There are also a glossary, a bibliography containing more than 2,000 entries, and an index. The book is organized into four sections – “Individual bilingualism,” “Languages in society,” “Languages in contact in the world” (with “Language maps of the world”), and “Bilingual education” – each with many subsections.

Paul Chilton, Analysing political discourse: Theory and practice. London & New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. xiv, 226. Hb $125.00, Pb $35.11.

Analysing political discourse does not merely address issues concerning either politics of language or languages of politics; it offers practical analyses of actual specimens of political text and talk. The discourses analyzed, in both the British and international arenas, include political interviews, parliamentary language, politicians' speeches, and discourses that concern foreigners and religion. The analysis is linguistically oriented, grounded in a theory of language and politics. In this review, I shall first give an overview of the linguistic theory on which the author bases his analysis and then select two actual analyses for illustration. Finally, I shall say a few words about the style of this volume.

Long an immigrant society, whether Hong Kong welcomes ethnic minorities remains debatable. Combining Wesselmann and colleagues’ (2016) social exclusion framework, raciolinguistics, and interview data, this study investigates the social exclusion experience of Hong Kong's African economic and student migrants. The findings show that African immigrants who lack linguistic capacity are ostracised in different areas of life. Impolite language usage stigmatises them as poor and ghost-like and stereotypes them as refugees. Taking a raciolinguistic perspective, however, this study finds that race, rather than language, is the root cause of social exclusion. Lastly, the study shows that African migrants manifest agency in ameliorating marginalisation through various activities, revealing the bidirectional nature of social exclusion. Overall, this study empirically enriches the current understanding of Africans’ social exclusion experiences in Hong Kong through the lens of language. It theoretically contributes to the current discussion on raciolinguistics by extending it to the Asian context. (Social exclusion, Hong Kong, African immigrants, verbal rejection, non-verbal rejection, racism, raciolinguistics)*

Jennifer Coates, Men talk: Stories in the making of masculinities. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xi, 219. Hb $59.95 Pb $29.95.

It is pleasing to see the publication of a book-length study of language and masculinity, a focus of research that literally did not exist ten years ago. But although this book is rich in its presentation of data and its description of narrative, I was disappointed. The book falls short of its goal of explicating and understanding men's talk; rather, it reifies stereotypes of men without challenging or questioning why these stereotypes exist.

Linguistic differences in staged or scripted performances matter, since language, or language-ing, is a critical component in structuring power and maintaining unequal social differences or challenging and complicating them. To investigate such scripted speech in the context of Indigenous characters, we draw on the semiotic processes of erasure and rhematisation as well as the newly proposed concepts of erasure marking and semiotic overlay. We examine a dataset of Australian television series with Indigenous characters that feature significant creative involvement by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander individuals. Crucially, these series address mainstream, mixed audiences, meaning they must blend multiple perspectives to reach diverse viewers. We explore overt meta-discourses and subtle signs of linguistic characterisation to show how Indigenous screen creatives counter or challenge erasure and rhematisation by diversifying and complicating characters’ linguistic repertoires and bringing in Indigenous discourses and perspectives. (Semiotic processes, ethnoracialisation, decolonisation, Australia, mainstream media, Aboriginal English, language ideologies)*