Buchbesprechungen • Rezensionsartikel Burkhard DRETZKE: Modem British and American English Pronunciation. Paderborn: Schöningh 1998 (UTB 2053), 247 Seiten [DM 36,80]. Overall aim and structure. This book is intended to be "a basic, practical textbook" (7) in English phonetics and phonology presumably for university students of English since it has appeared in the UTB series of university books. The book is divided up into two disproportionately sized parts, one entitled "Phonetics and Phonology" (11-210); the other, "A course in transcription and pronunciation exercises" (213- 242). The individual chapters in part one introduce terms, phonemes, organs of speech (chapter l)); give a description of vowels and consonants (2) and an outline of stress, rhythm and intonation (3) including the dimension of connected speech (4). Chapter 5 looks at phonology with four and a halfpages on CHOMSKY/ HALLE's Speech Patterns of Eng/ ish, which, however, remains largely unrelated to the material in the rest of the book. Chapter 6 looks at selected aspects of transcription; and 7, at some problems of spelling and pronunciation. Chapter 8, a survey of RP and GenAm, is, despite the title, the only chapter where GenAm is seriously treated. Contrastive analysis and error analysis are the focus of chapter 9; and the leaming, teaching, and testing of pronunciation skills comes in 10. Whatever positive expectations this book arouses, they are severely disappointed. This is not a book about modern British and American pronunciation, but about the RP accent. Although Dretzke often talks about British English, the book contains virtually nothing on Irish or Scottish pronunciations and only occasional remarks on regional variation in England. Socioregional varieties of BrE are listed (chap. 8), but in fact only England is treated without any indication of typical features of regional pronunciation or a map showing the individual regions ( 159). Furthermore, the two approaches to the question of norms which are introduced, the inherent norm hypothesis and the imposed norm hypothesis ( 162), are not discussed or evaluated. The student-readers are left on their own. The norm is, of course, RP, and that is what is described in this book. We see this in the pronunciation word lists, in which exclusively RP forms are given. The book self-evidently treats / o/ with no more than an initial labe! in the ! ist on p. 11 that it is not to be found in GenAm; the phoneme descriptions in chapter 2 (35-69) deal only with RP; no previous mention is made that a treatment of GenAm is to come on 167-177. Hence the reader learns that RP has twenty vowels, but nothing about GenAm. But even what the reader eventually learns may be of questionable value. For example, / a : / - / -: i: / variation in GenAm (where RP has / o/ ) is presented without any attention to the influence of phonetic environment. Indeed, the text says pairs like collar / a: / and caller / -: i: I are "usually homophonous" (168) despite information to the contrary in KENY0N/ KN0TT: A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English (Springfield: Merriam 1953) and WELLS: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (Bumt Mill: Longman 1990). Usefulness. The treatment of the individual phonemes of RP contains a doubling of information (what comes under "Description ... " is often repeated immediately afterward under "Classification ... "). But important orientation like differentiating features from distinctive features is not made in chapters 1 and 2 even though the chart on 32 is constructed accordingly. This point should make it clear that much that it is useful to pass on to students about pronunciation both when dealing with a single accent and when comparing varieties is of little use if presented as straightforward articulatory descriptions as in chapters 2-4 (pp. 35-114) and not in connection with structural information about the language. Without phonology much of what is said is of little use: why make what is essentially a boring presentation of articulatory phonetics and then a separate and virtually unrelated presentation of phonology without coordinating the two and making the whole more useful? (The initial attempt at a structural definition of vowels and consonants on 19 is inadequate and inaccessible for students.) Some of the points that would profit from such an integrated treatment are the pronunciation offinal <-y, -ie> as / i/ (37; not discussed until 132). Ditto/ a: / vs. Ire/ (39; with an inadequate explanation on 167 f). Ditto the / D/ flap in GenAm, where the requirement that the following syllable be unstressed is ignored (49) and where the more detailed treatment on 170 most unfortunately refers to the following vowel as stressed rather than unstressed. Ditto word class IFLlllliL 28 ( 1999) 224 Buchbesprechungen • Rezensionsartikel pairs with final voiced vs. voiceless contrasts such as bathe bath or breathe breath (56), which could be expanded to / z s/ (use) and / v f/ (believe belief). Ditto dental/ alveolar+ / j/ in GenAm: nothing said about the natural class of consonants not followed by / j/ , viz. +coronal, nor about the influence of syllable structure, cf. value, monument, January, all with / j/ in GenAm (67, 169); furthermore, nothing is said about (lexical classes as reflected in) spelling: after all RP also has / du: / , but for do, not due, etc. There is no systematic discussion of palatalization (referred to only as assimilation) in connection with ltf, d3, f, 3'; hence no attention is called to numerous RP - GenAm contrasts in this area ( 110). Perhaps one of the most telling negative points about this book is that information is inconsistently presented: some of it is presented twice. Some comes much too late; some really useful information is simply never supplied. For example, suprasegmentals are introduced in § 1.2 with no mention of rhythm, yet rhythm is important enough to appear in the title of chapter 3. Part of the inconsistency of the book is the unsystematic use of terminology. Some terms are not introduced and no harm is done because, for example in the chart on 21, expressions such as tone, pause, tempo, rhythmicality are relatively general; but not explaining tension is problematic and not explaining voice qualifiers, voice qualifications is hopeless (the latter are repeated on 33 with exemplification). Other examples of terms not explained or explained much too late: middle (37); close-mid (43), epenthetic (50); textual vs. indexicalfunctions of intonation (93); hypercorrection (used 38; explained: 177); conservative, general and advanced RP ( 148); cardinal vowels ( 152). Sometimes terms are used inconsistently, e.g. voice (21) vs. voice (23). Trill and roll are both used without pointing out that they refer to the same thing (65). Stress is differently defined on 19 (energy) and 72 (loudness, duration, quality, pitch). / w/ is given as bilabial (30, 31) and more suitably as velar on 47. Symbols like 15, R, c; , x (31 ), / &/ (37), or tel (42) are listed, but not explained. This list could easily be expanded. With all that could usefully be said about English pronunication, one wonders why such a triviality as the poem "The Chaos" appears twice ( 139 f in part; 230-234 in its totality); the quotation from Shaw ("lt is impossible for an Englishman to open bis mouth without making some other Englishman despise him") is amusing, 1 suppose, but must it, too, show up twice (18, I63)? That the consonants of English are listed and classified on 30 ff and again on 47) underscores the point: the book is poorly conceived and organized. Or take the example of the exercise questions that sporadically appear; often they demand no more than review of what was already said (e.g. 80); sometimes they are questions about concepts not dealt with in the book and thus requiring other sources (e.g. 151). Or, they are simply unanswerable for the presumed readership, e.g. "What is the rote ofthe IPA these days? "; "After a spelling reform, how would one spell ... ? " (145). This book contains numerous, often disorganized lists such as that of function words ( 103 ff): it is not alphabetical and not by word class. Contractions, so important to the concept of weak forms, are not used so we find the inappropriate where is the paper? that isfine. Long lists appear of words with segmental and stress differences in RP (152-159). Despite all the space devoted to these uninspiring lists of alternative pronunciations, the unsystematic word lists at the ends of the individual chapters are not only hard to make use of (not alphabetical), but all too frequently ignore alternative pronunciations. And in other connections we find, for example, the verb con'jure with final stress only (20) or! rene as with final II/ only (37). One very noticeable alternative which is given represents a disservice to students: a / ps-/ pronunciation of psychology (etc.) is suggested (at three different places: 48, 100, 143). While this rnay be possible, it is unusual and not recommendable for foreign learners. The chapter on spelling and pronunciation is a further disservice, for here we find vowels as lists organized according to sound-to-spelling relations, but consonants in lists according to spelling-to-sound. The chapter contains long lists without any indication of rules and regularities. lt is as if spelling in English were completely chaotic, which is a very mistaken impressive to give (cf. e.g. R. VENEZKY: The Structure of English Orthography. The Hague: Mouton, 1970). Although the information given in this book is generally correct, there are far too many errors and oversights. Some examples: / w/ and / j/ are produced with "very slight blockage" (19); the vocal cords are described as "two bands of muscles" rather than cartilage (22); a widely opened gl~ttis does not result, as said, "in glottal friction [sie: no comma] which is responsible for all voiceless consonants" (22 f; cf. D. ABERCROMBIE: Elements ofGeneral Phonetics. Edinburgh: University Press, 1967, p. 26); in pronouncing lFllJllL 28 (1999) Buchbesprechungen • Rezensionsartikel 225 / 1/ "the rims of the tongue make contact with the sides of the palate along the line of the teeth ..." (24); the preference in GenAm for / 9s/ inpaths, truths, etc. (55) is not substantiated in WELLS (qq.v. path, truth); how can / s/ and / z/ be produced with "light contact with the upper alveolar ridge" (56); ditto ! JI and / 3/ (58); RP and GenAm preferences for / J/ and / 3/ are reversed (58); rise-fall intonation for emphasis is not mentioned (96; cf. M. HALLIDAY: A Course in Spoken English: Intonation. London: OUP 1970); the vowel in not is given as / o/ in KENY0N/ KNOTI (130) (they have / a/ ; q.v. not); allophones are said to occur only in complementary distribution ( 117). Or how about this: "If [p] and [ph] could occur in the same environment, they would have phonemic status"! Free variants (118) such as tapped [r] for constricted [J] are regarded as not being allophones of each other. All too often author and publisher are simply too careless. As representative of many more cases look at the vowels diagrams on 28 f. The first two charts are missing the wedge of spacing which describes the central area hence making / u: / and / u/ and the target areas for / au/ and / au/ much too central; Ire/ is too low as is the initial point of / ea/ ; / oo/ is not included; German / e: / and / r/ are wrongly shown as equally high (29; cf. P. DELATIRE: Comparing the Phonetic Features of English, French, German and Spanish. London: Harrap 1965, p. 52). German front rounded vowels are given, but are not explained here or, indeed, anywhere although the book is supposed to be contrasti ve. The claim to contrastivity is somewhat hollow for a variety of reasons. Little attention is paid to distinguishing regional German difficulties vis-a-vis English. The perhaps most typical feature of a German accent in English, the replacement of final Jenes (phonologically voiced) by fortes, is ignored in statements in which voiced sounds are said tobe principally louder than voiceless sounds (72): not so in the case of phonologically voiced (phonetically devoiced) final Jenes. No advice is offered on rhythm and on the importance of "swallowing" unstressed syllables and weak forms in English. Instead we read: "In very careful speech, nearly every sound is produced accurately and fully, ..: " (102), which is surely misleading. The bibliographies (at the ends of most chapters) are helpful, but there is a notable Jack of documentation where it would be useful, such as to the "various studies" mentioned on 18. Also note that The Sounds of English and German was written by M0ULTON, not STOCKWELL and BOWEN, who wrote The Sounds of English and Spanish (192). Although Dretzke is obviously not a native speaker, the book is generally smoothly written despite occasional uneven spots and some difficulty with punctuation (especially commas with relative pronouns and comma splice). Learning and Teaching Pronunciation. The overall appeal of this book is on balance negative. I say this despite the useful chapter on stress and some interesting suggestions regarding the relative weighting of non-native pronunciation errors such as native-speaker attitudes toward them (206 ff). As evidence for this evaluation I will not repeat what has already been said. Rather, I would like to call attention to Dretzke's concept of the teaching of pronunciation, outlined in chapter 10. The author correctly points out the importance of discrimination in the perception of the target pronunciation, and he sees this as a prerequisite for the development of psychomotoric skills. However, in doing this he overvalues what he calls cognitive skills, which refer chiefly to knowing how to relate a written token to its associated pronunciation, for example, indict to / m'dart/ . This is, I believe, an indication that the author is, quite inappropriately, using written language as model and point of departure. A detailed taxonomy ofpronunciation skills (194-198) which moves from individual sound to stress to intonation is the basis for his "bottom-up approach" (198). Dretzke starts with ear-training in various contexts (individual sounds, sounds in words, in sentences, in texts) goes on to imitation the author uses the rather odd word verb mimic (201) in the same sequence of contexts and including memorization of short texts; and it finishes with a more individual productive phase. Dretzke rejects a global "top-down approach" even though the lauer is surely the more wide-spread, the more natural (cf. acquistion of mothertongue pronunciation), and the more successful approach-despite obvious interference from leamers' native language pronunciation habits. The reasons the author gives for his rejection is that "too many problems arise at any one time" (200). · lt is very questionable whether Dretzke's unintegrated fashion of teaching can really get off the ground. I feel it would be a catastrophe for the following reasons: it would dissociate individual sounds from their context and teach them before both lexical stress and sentence stress are introduced. The whole would be lFLU! L 28 ( 1999) 226 Buchbesprechungen • Rezensionsartikel followed by intonation. I fail to see how this can be done practically, that is, how it is possible to separate segmental from suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation. In individual cases, of course, tutorials based on this or a similar approach and directed at individual articulatory problems can be used fruitfully. But Dretzke says very Iittle about the social forms of teaching which he envisions (he briefly mentions teacher presentations, the use of Ianguage labs (negative), and CALL programs (positive)). For learners the procedure he seems to be suggesting would, in any case, be highly demotivating in addition to being impractical. Part II of the book seems to be a collection of the kind of material the author has used in his teaching. However, he has not lost a single word of explanation on such questions as what the point of the material (lists of individual words, short texts, first names and geographical names) is, what is expected of the teacher and of the students, or why this particular material was chosen. In addition, some of the texts (esp. 2.1.5) are unidiomatic. To come to an end: perhaps symptomatic of the amateurish approach tobe found here are the quotations from Humboldt and Passy on 18 f. Humboldt's words ("Die Lautform ist das eigentliche konstitutive und leitende Prinzip der Sprache") are simply beside the point; and Passy's words ("Peut-on vraiment penetrer Je genie d'une langue, quand on Ja massacre par une prononciation barbare? ") reveal a narrow-mindedness which should not be brought to this subject. All in all the hoped for development of "some enthusiam for phonetics and phonology" (7) is unlikely to come about through the offices of this book. Bielefeld Stephan Gramley Gabrielle H0GAN-BRUN, Udo O.H. JUNG (Hrsg.): Media -Multimedia - Omnimedia. Frankfurt/ M. [etc.]: Lang 1999 (Bayreuth Contributions to Glottodidactics; 7), 221 Seiten [DM 69,-] Die für die aktuelle Diskussion um den Einsatz der modernen Technologien in Bildungswesen, Wirtschaft und im Homebereich interessante, in Englisch geschriebene Publikation vereint ausgewählte Beiträge zweier internationaler Veranstaltungen: des CETaLL- [= Commission on Educational Technology and Language Learning) Symposiums "Educational Technology at the Crossroads" anläßlich des 11.Weltkongresses der AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquee) vom 04.-09.08.1996 in Jyväskylä sowie des V.CETaLL-Symposiums "Man and the Media" als Teil des XIX.APLIUT- [= Association des Professeurs de Langues des Instituts Universitaires de Technologie) Kongresses in Nancy vom 05.-07.06.1997. Dem weit gespannten Thema entspricht der Facettenreichtum der Beiträge. Sie befassen sich sowohl mit Grundfragen der Einbeziehung moderner Techniken (vorwiegend im Fremdsprachenunterricht) aus theoretischer und unterrichtspraktischer Sicht als auch mit Voraussetzungen und Folgerungen der Nutzung einzelner interaktiver Medien, vornehmlich CD-ROM, E-Mail und Internet. Zur weiteren intensiven wissenschaftlichen und praktischen Beschäftigung mit dem Gegenstand lädt die am Ende stehende, 4060 Titel umfassende internationale Bibliographie zum computergestützten Sprachlernen von Udo Jung ein, deren Vorzug auch darin besteht, daß der nach Verfassernamen geordneten Liste ein Inhaltsindex folgt. Dieser nach 681 Stichwörtern geordnete Index erleichtert das Finden spezieller Beiträge. Der dynamisierende Titel des Sammelbandes ist bewußt gewählt: Er orientiert Beiträger wie Leser auf die Notwendigkeit, aus der sich immer rascher vollziehenden Entwicklung im technologischen und Softwarebereich die richtigen Schlußfolgerungen zu ziehen, will sagen: Bewährtes und Neues miteinander zu verbinden, die interaktiven Medien sinnvoll und effektiv für das Sprachenlemen zu nutzen; sie in das sprachpädagogische Gesamtkonzept zu integrieren, womit die von den zahlreichen Bedenkenträgern so gern gestellte Alternativfrage (Effizienz des „herkömmlichen" Sprachlernens hie und des CBT da) als inadäquat gekennzeichnet wird. Eine so formulierte, auf Legitimation abgestellte Forderung nach einem Vergleich ist, wie bereits im ersten Beitrag von M. Kenning ("Effective Language Learning and the Media: A Study of Current Theories for the Exploitation of Media Technology") deutlich wird, kaum zu realisieren, da Fiktionen bzw. Bündel von miteinander verknüpften Variablen miteinander zu vergleichen wären. Das erwähnte Postulat hat auch einen verengten Blick, nämlich auf den lehrergeleiteten Unterricht im Klassenzimmer bzw. in Computerzentren und daselbst unter Aufsicht abzuarbeitende Kurse, als Grundlage ergo auf ein Szenario, das zumindest heute und in der nahen Zukunft die Ausnahme, nicht die Regel sein wird. Es lFlL11lllL 28 (1999)