Rezensionen 178 Duffley assumes that the to-infinitive is more complex than the -ing form, consisting of two parts, the stem and to, and that the function of to is to portray the represented event as the endpoint of the situation expressed by the matrix. In certain cases the to infinitive can also have a direct object function when it meets the syntactic criteria necessary for a direct object. In such cases, however, to does not express a relation between the bare infinitive and the main verb but rather denotes a movement towards the end of the event expressed by the bare infinitive. Though the distinction between -ing and the to-infinitive seems to work well for the cases in which they appear as objects of a matrix, the distinction is not as obvious when they occur in the subject position. Both -ing and the to-infinitive can express a fact, with no real difference in meaning. How these cases should be treated, and what different values the -ing and the to-infinitive can be given in these cases, remain open to debate. In cases where the two forms are not substitutable, this is explained as being due to certain additional meanings of the to-infinitive (that of expressing goal, desire and purpose) which the -ing lacks. Overall, Duffley’s book is an interesting and valuable study of the -ing gerund participle. It raises many relevant issues and also gives its own internally coherent account of how the values and functions of the -ing could be treated. For the present reviewer, an important insight frequently expressed and documented in the book is that the aspectual meaning of the sentence is not attributable solely to the meaning of the matrix verb, but rather the outcome of an interaction of multiple factors. The variety of values that have been attributed to the to-infinitive and -ing constructions over the years (in terms of factivity, modality, temporality, etc.) have shown that complementation is a complex phenomenon and in order to account for all the phenomena involved, a close interrelation between the matrix and subordinate clause must be presupposed. Duffley’s approach is a plausible one, since he gives a schematic meaning to the to-infinitive and -ing construction, and, at the same time, defines the meaning of these constructions with respect to the meaning and function of the matrix. Tünde Nagy KLTE University of Debrecen & University of Freiburg Roy Goldblatt, Jopi Nyman, and John A.Stotesbury (eds.), Close Encounters of an Other Kind. New Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity and American Studies. (Studies in Literature and Culture, 13). Joensuu: Univ. of Joensuu, 2005. Larisa Mikhaylova On the cover of this book we see a snake plaited into a braid, a highly ambiguous image. A tame snake? A snake hiding in order to bite? Or a snake willingly becoming an ornament? Hardly. Snakes don’t do that kind of things. However, people can … It does not often happen that most of the articles included in a book of conference proceedings turn out to be not only well organized (which might be work of the AAA Band 33 (2008), Heft 1 Rezensionen 179 editors) but also represent material in depth studied from original angles and thus filling a previously undeveloped territory, or at least one of its regions. The territory itself - ethnic cultures within American culture - can hardly be considered to be unexplored; starting from the early 1990s, literature and culture have been increasingly analyzed along these lines. But ethnic components had been neglected for so long that there remained and still remains much to be said and understood, especially in the current situation where Europe is ceasing to be based only on the cultural traditions of the “titular nations”. A conference on new perspectives on these issues was therefore held at the University of Joensuu, Finland, in June 2003, with participants from several universities in Finland and from 11 other countries - the United States, Turkey, Austria, Greece, Italy, France, Poland, Great Britain, Macedonia, Sweden, and Norway. The volume under review brings together the papers given on this occasion. The book is divided into four parts, starting with the active Asian component (Asian Americas), then elaborating on African American perspectives, then dealing with several groups called Emerging Ethnicities - Arab Americans, Chicanos, Creoles - and interactions between, for example, the Jewish and Oriental tradition, with the final section being dedicated to Conflicts of Whiteness. I have already praised the consistency and analytical soundness of most articles, which makes this book a good resource for any course in contemporary American Culture (in fact, I have already used it in seminars on multiculturalism at the Moscow State University, Department of Journalism). I will therefore start with those pieces which I have found particularly useful in class, and then proceed to the others, highlighting their strong points. The Asian Americas section is concerned with the experiences of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, and Sri Lankan writers, taking into consideration not only US but also Canadian cultural contexts. Although authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston or Bharati Mukherjee have already received considerable attention, other Asian American writers remain much less studied. One of the recurrent questions for ethnic consciousness these days is “What am I? ”, thus opening the book with the article addressing this question “‘What Am I Anyhow? ’ Ethnic Consciousness, Matrilineage, and the Borderlands-Within in Maxine Hong Kingston’s and Rebecca Walker’s Autobiographies” by Sylvia Schultermandl (Austria) is very appropriate. The author uses the concept of borderlands as developed by Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) as a place/ territory for the characters where they constantly try to locate “their hyphenated identities outside the realms of ethnic boundaries” (p.3). Kingston and Walker also challenge contemporary concepts such as multiculturalism, hybridity and multiple subjectivity. Schultermandl takes mother-daughter conflicts over cultural affiliations as a focal point of her study, and suggests that a mestiza needs to claim her matrilinear heritage instead of being claimed by it. Native Speaker (1995) by Chang-rae Lee serves two researchers - Klara Szmanko (Poland) and A. Noelle Brada-Williams (USA) - as material for analysis of interethnic relations and tensions which do not become a focus of study very often and thus have a tendency to be ignored, namely relations between Korean Americans and African Americans. In addition, Williams discusses Birthmates by Gish Jen, and Szmanko Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston, both as a way for ethnic Rezensionen 180 writers to learn to listen to one another, thus getting to know their side of the American experience. Though not very extensive, these two pieces cover an essential theme, giving a voice to minorities “striving for visibility” to each other. Serena Fusco’s (Italy) contribution “Beyond Minority Discourse: Asian-American Reading,” provides a review of a “diasporic shift” based mainly on Chinese-American literature. She takes Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China (1981/ 1998) by Nieh Hualing as the central text “claimed by various critical and literary traditions - American, Asian, and Asian-American” (p.32). Problematizing the very concept of “Diaspora”, the novel, whose heroine struggles to encompass the entire historical span of her personal past, American and Chinese, presents immigration and Diaspora “as fundamentally interconnected” (p.40). Similar close readings of a single novel where the protagonist takes the brunt of race, class, and gender in various combinations are given in Minna Niemi’s (Finland) “Challenging Psychoanalysis: A Black Woman’s Experience of Race , Class and Gender in Alice Walker’s Meridian,” and in Sophia Emmanouilidou’s (Greece) “Border-Crossing and the Subject in Abeyance in Irene Beltran Hernandez’s Across the Great River”. “Possibilities and limits are the two keyitems directing us to transcendence and the projections of self across borders” (p.161) is the main conclusion of this article, full of step-by-step depictions of how the girl Kata moves through the process, accompanied by insightful discussions of Anzaldúa and Gerard Delanty’s Modernity and Postmodernity. Though perhaps a little too long for an average class, it is an excellent means to develop analytical abilities of promising students. The Chicana/ o topic is further enhanced by Marc Priewe’s (Germany) article on Performance Art. The section on Black perspectives is opened by a pertinent essay on Martin Luther King’s rhetoric by Swedish scholar Fredrik Sunnemark, showing in detail how different concepts of identity, viz. “The Negro”, “My People”, “We and Us”, have developed and which functions they play in King’s rhetoric. Though one of the least engaging pieces in the book, it does illuminate important stages in the “struggle to be able to establish a new dominating paradigm” (p.71), and thus is important not only for African American cultural history, but also for scholars of public communication in general. The impact of the section is further enhanced by Anne Urbanowsky’s (France) article on different visions within the African American community, including Black middle-class values, and S. Kärkkäinen Terian’s “Images of Desired Environments in African-American Communities”, in which the Finnish-born social scientist, who has been living in the USA for 35 years, presents the study of a Midwestern town in an economically depressed area using Marx’s theory of alienation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as basis of her research. She concludes that basic deficiencies prevent higher aesthetic needs from developing, and as “cultural identity and pride of place go together, thus there is no sense of place in a ‘home’ that is not home” (p.121). A senior lecturer at the University of Turku (Finland), Marja-Leena Hakkarainen, who is working at present on a book project about German migrant writing, gives the section a unique perspective, comparing African American experience and that of Continental European Black German writing, mainly through the analysis of Ika Hügel-Marschall’s autobiographical novel and May Ayim’s poetry. Interesting insights can also be found in the essays on the subject of Whiteness, given depth by the historically oriented articles “Gendered Transactions in the Conquest and Settlement of America” by Felicia Smith-Kleiner (UK) and “The Need for Rezensionen 181 Strangeness: Captivity Narratives and Issues of Race and Gender in Early America” by Christopher Cairny (Turkey). A substantial part of the material analyzed is taken from the Creole and Caribbean traditions reflected in Michell Cliff’s (Kaisa Ilmonen) and Jean Rhys’ novels (Sara Eeva, Finland). Italians and Jews were not always considered white in America, as Cheryl Alexander Malcolm (Poland) demonstrates in “The Show’s Not Over until the Schlemiel Sings: When Jewish Comedy Meets Puccini,” and Stephano Luconi (Italy) in “How Italian Americans Became White,” with the most extensive bibliography on the subject; while Salah Questrati’s (France) article suggests that Arab Americans are also not considered White. I have not mentioned a couple of contributions which did not strike me as particularly original or consistent, but the book as a whole is a very satisfying collection which should receive more recognition. Larisa Mikhaylova Moscow State University Journalism Department Encarnación Hidalgo, Luis Quereda, Juan Santana (eds.), Corpora in the Foreign Language Classroom. Selected papers from the Sixth international Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora (TaLC 6). University of Granada, Spain, 4-7 July, 2004. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2007 Georg Marko The book under review is the collection of selected papers presented at the 6 th TaLC (“Teaching and Language Corpora”) conference held at the University of Granada, Spain in the summer of 2004. It contains 20 contributions (+ foreword) by 28 authors from (or working in) Ireland, Norway, Germany, Japan, China, the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Zimbabwe. Even though the conception of TaLC would allow for a wider range of topics, the editors have decided to limit the volume to research into the application of corpus analysis to foreign language teaching, which - as so often - actually means the teaching of English as a foreign language. The contributions are divided into four sections, two minor ones - “Setting the scene” (two articles) and “Afterword” (just one article) - and two major ones - “Theoretical issues: corpus design and exploitation in the foreign language classroom” (seven articles) and “Practical applications of corpora in the foreign language classroom” (ten articles). “Setting the scene”, supposed to present ideas running through all contributions in the volume, starts with Angela Chamber’s review article on studies of the benefits and pitfalls of monolingual corpus use by EFL learners. Although advantages clearly outnumber disadvantages, Chambers thinks that in order to realize the former, corpus-based approaches to language learning need to extend beyond the circles of researchers practicing and promoting them in academia at the moment. AAA Band 33 (2008), Heft 1