Book Reviews

World Englishes in Asian Contexts

YAMUNA KACHRU and CECIL L. NELSON, 2006
Series: Asian Englishes Today, edited by Kingsley Bolton
Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press
xxiv þ 412 pp., 962 209 756 0, pb £20.95

Recent years have seen growth in research and teaching of the sociolinguistics of
world Englishes, and Professors Kachru and Nelson’s survey of the academic field
responds to the very real need for potential textbooks within the area. This title is a
valuable addition to the Asian Englishes Today series and offers invaluable resources
for the large number of ‘advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students of
English and English-language education’ (p. 5) in programmes that increasingly offer
courses in ‘World Englishes’, ‘English as an International Language’ or ‘Varieties of
English’. The book aims to survey the body of scholarship in world Englishes –
scholarship found primarily, though by no means exclusively, in the journal World
Englishes – and to introduce varieties that have developed in Asia. The result is an
impressive generalist introduction written in a tradition of English studies that surveys
languages as well as literatures.
World Englishes in Asian Contexts is written in 22 chapters across four sections and
contains several features that make it a useful textbook. At the end of each chapter is a
series of suggested activities to guide further discussion of topics or to suggest
research questions for extended study. The volume does not assume any formal
knowledge of linguistics and a glossary of important terminology is included to
assist readers without formal training in linguistics. An annotated bibliography of 15
books, most of which are reference works, also introduces key works in the field. The
text is written for students preparing to become English language instructors in Asia,
but also confronts several issues prevalent in English language programmes in North
America.
The first section, ‘Theory, Methods and Contexts’, contains five chapters. The
first two chapters introduce much of the conceptual foundations and research agendas
of work within the world Englishes paradigm. Based on B. Kachru (1985), the world
Englishes model examines English as a pluricentric language in three circles of
varieties: an ‘Inner Circle’ of varieties from England and the first diaspora of English
to settlement colonies in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and so on; an
‘Outer Circle’ of varieties that develop from the second diaspora of English to trade
and administration colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia (for example, Jamaican
English, Nigerian English, Singapore English, and so on); and an ‘Expanding Circle’ of
varieties that result from the more recent global spread of English in trade and
communication, but without institutional status (for example, English in Japan or
Korea).
Chapter 3, an exceptionally useful review of linguistic features that characterize
‘Outer-Circle’ and ‘Expanding-Circle’ varieties, describes features of English
phonology, lexis, grammar and discourse that are unlike those of most other

European Journal of English Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2008, pp. 113 – 122
ISSN 1382-5577 print/ISSN 1744-4243 online
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13825570801900620
114 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES

languages. In addition to describing characteristics of English that would not

necessarily be salient to most ‘Inner-Circle’ users of English, the description is
extremely accessible to all readers, yet without loss of authority. The title of the
chapter, ‘Structural Variation’, refers to the worldwide development of English
varieties, not to patterns of variation that form within Englishes. The description of
varieties in this chapter and throughout the volume is relentlessly synchronic and
without speculation as to how varieties have developed, although the authors do note
that ‘these varieties of English are influenced by the local language(s) in various areas
of their grammars and exhibit specific phonological, lexical, syntactic and discoursal
characteristics’ (p. 35). However, no attempt is made to formulate a model of how
Englishes evolve. Chapter 4 continues the broad description of ‘Outer-’ and
‘Expanding-Circle’ varieties in relation to pragmatic and sociocultural competence,
and the first section closes with a chapter devoted to discussion of intelligibility of
English varieties. As a key area of research in world Englishes, Kachru and Nelson
demonstrate that intelligibility affects English users across and within all three circles;
it is unfair and incorrect to examine intelligibility only of ‘Outer-’ and ‘Expanding-
Circle’ varieties to ‘Inner-Circle’ variety speakers.
The second section, ‘Acquisition, Creativity, Standards and Testing’, addresses
students in applied linguistics and outlines the need for an understanding of world
Englishes within English language teaching (that is, EFL or ESL) in five eloquent and
persuasive chapters. Chapter 6 discusses differences between the world Englishes
paradigm and research agendas and those of second language teaching. In particular,
Kachru and Nelson argue that the Interlanguage Hypothesis (ILH) does not
adequately describe the role of nativization within institutionalized varieties of the
‘Outer Circle’, just as it cannot explain variation in ‘Inner-Circle’ varieties. In
Chapter 7 this perspective is applied to the issues of codification of standards and
the subtle biases that perpetuate domination of ‘Inner-Circle’ varieties as
international and regional norm providers. However, Chapter 9’s discussion of
teaching and testing provides the most convincing statement of the need for world
Englishes in English language teacher training programmes. ESL/EFL teachers are
trained with a particular bias that favours the domination of ‘Inner-Circle’ varieties,
and this chapter effectively questions the myths that perpetuate that bias and
demonstrates how those who question (along with their discourses) are typically
marginalized in academic literature. In addition, two chapters of the second section,
Chapters 8 and 10, discuss the aesthetic importance of literary creativity in
multilingual English varieties and suggest ways to use world English literatures in
language classrooms.
To the degree that English language teachers typically have little exposure to
‘Outer-’ and ‘Expanding-Circle’ varieties in their training programmes, the third
section of the volume, ‘Profiles across Cultures’, describes features of Asian Englishes
in three chapters: ‘South Asian English’, ‘East Asian Englishes’ and ‘Southeast Asian
Englishes’. The profiles are sketched in the broadest strokes, generally without
discussion of either variations within the described Englishes or sources of nativization
of the varieties. Although descriptions are cursory, they provide outstanding reference
to the wide range of careful scholarship that has been conducted in individual
varieties. The section closes with description of two varieties from outside Asia:
‘African Englishes’ and ‘African-American Vernacular English.’ The former is
 REVIEWS 115

included because of the similarity in form and function with ‘Outer-Circle’ Asian
varieties. The last chapter of the section on African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) demonstrates how examination of the variety – as with other ‘Outer-Circle’
varieties – demands an appreciation for ‘the richness of [. . .] developments in the
syntax, semantics and pragmatics of AAVE, which should be recognized as positive
and creative’ (p. 219). Unlike other varieties described in the volume, the authors
summarize three hypotheses about the origins and development of AAVE. Like other
‘Outer-’ and ‘Inner-Circle’ varieties described, however, each hypothesis emphasizes
the role of language and dialect contact.
The final section of the volume, ‘Applied Theory and World Englishes’, surveys
several applications of world Englishes research in linguistics. The first two chapters
examine research into grammar and lexicography and the codification processes that
produce usage guides and dictionaries. Chapter 16 surveys four studies of grammar in
English varieties, all of which use quantitative approaches with corpora, although not
all are large corpora. Unfortunately, this chapter does not mention research that has
been completed from the International Corpus of English (ICE) project. Chapter 17 is
a similar examination of research that has informed the inclusion of items from South
East Asian ‘Outer-Circle’ varieties into contemporary dictionaries and, most
importantly, a ‘proposed Regional Dictionary for world Englishes in the Southeast
Asian and South Asian contexts’ (p. 243). Chapter 18 describes functional motivations
for code-mixing and code-switching as a feature of language behaviour in ‘Outer-’ and
‘Inner-Circle’ varieties.
Two chapters explore the role of culture in the formulation of conventions of
spoken and written communication respectively. A survey of three studies of
conversational interaction demonstrate the effects of age, gender and ethnicity in
‘Outer-Circle’ speaker interactions and the next chapter recounts the results of two
studies of contrastive rhetoric to conclude that discourse and rhetorical variation
across Englishes is as prevalent as the phonological, lexical and grammatical
variation described throughout the book. Chapter 21 extends this survey to the
possible role of ‘genre’ in world Englishes by surveying important work in genre
theory by Bhatia (1993) and by demonstrating how an analysis of discourse ‘moves’
can identify general features of text genres. To the extent that formal features or
classifications of genres might differ in various cultures, the method of analysis
offers another tool for the study of ‘Outer-’ and ‘Expanding-Circle’ varieties.
Finally, Kachru and Nelson end the section with a thoughtful and candid
examination of critiques of the world Englishes model from the perspectives of
power and language ideologies.
The scope of the volume’s survey of world Englishes research is extremely broad
and critics may easily identify studies that have been overlooked and might be
included in a more comprehensive survey. However, as an introductory textbook the
volume presents a coherent and thorough description of research in a highly accessible
format. Although it is a modest component of the book, the additional emphasis on
Asian Englishes will likely be of special interest to individuals preparing to enter
English language professions and, as such, makes the volume an important
contribution to the Asian Englishes Today series.

Ó 2008 ANDREW MOODY, University of Macau, Macao

116 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES

References
Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London:
Longman.
Kachru, Braj B. (1985). ‘Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English
Language in the Outer Circle.’ English in the World: Teaching and Learning the
Language and Literatures. Eds Randolph Quirk and Henry Widdowson. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 11 – 30.

Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History

KINGSLEY BOLTON, 2003
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
xviii þ 338 pp., 0 521 03001 3, pb £21.99

This book is one of the most thorough and advanced studies of Chinese Englishes in
the field of English studies. It offers a sociolinguistic account of Hong Kong English,
and the history of English in Hong Kong and China. Kingsley Bolton, formerly
Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong, has published many articles and
books on issues concerning World Englishes and Hong Kong English (for example,
Bolton, 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2002b). This current volume can be regarded as a
more comprehensive account and a further development of these themes. Bolton
focuses on Hong Kong English and connects it to the forgotten history of English in
China and places it in the wider context of the study of Asian Englishes. Following
Kachru’s (1992) notion of a paradigm shift in the study of World Englishes, he argues
that the sociolinguistic conditions in Hong Kong are ripe for the recognition of Hong
Kong English as one of the World Englishes.
The book consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 offers an overview of current
approaches to the study of new Englishes and World Englishes, including English
studies, corpus linguistics, the sociology of language, applied linguistics, pidgin and
creole studies, lexicography and critical linguistics. It also examines the debates and
discourses on World Englishes and new Englishes and their relevance to the study of
English in Hong Kong and China.
In Chapter 2, the focus is on the sociolinguistics of English during the final years
of British colonialism. It reviews the sociolinguistic background of Hong Kong society
during rapid political, economic and social changes. It also examines the
characteristics of Hong Kong as a multilingual society and the myths underlying the
sociolinguistic description of Hong Kong in recent years.
Chapter 3 concentrates on the past history of English in China, including
an archaeological account of English in southern China from 1637 to 1949. Bolton
reveals the history of English in South China which can be traced back to the
early seventeenth century and extended to the Hong Kong English of the present.
Chapter 4 investigates the sociolinguistic conditions necessary for the recognition
of Hong Kong English as one of the World Englishes in the Kachruvian paradigm. It is
argued that the recognition of Hong Kong English not only relies on the recognition of
linguistic features, but also on the acceptance of a new space for discourses concerning
English in Hong Kong.
 REVIEWS 117

In the final chapter, a survey of the history of English language teaching in China is
presented in order to connect the history of English in Hong Kong and South China
with that of the People’s Republic of China.
Overall, this book provides clear interpretations and valuable references
regarding the issue of new Englishes. For students interested in this area, the first
chapter offers an integrated and very useful introduction to approaches and research
in the field. Through the claim of pluri-centricity of English, the codification of
innovations and bilingual creativity (Kachru, 1992), it claims the recognition of
Hong Kong English as a localized variety of English. In addition, as several scholars
have argued (for example, Seidlhofer and Jenkins, 2003), to a certain extent the
ownership of English has been passed from native to non-native speakers in the
outer circle.
However, for parents and English teachers around the world, the recognition
of new Englishes as legitimate varieties does not necessarily lead to the acceptance
of a local model of English teaching in school (Ferguson, 2006). This is partly
because new norms are still not codified and accepted, and due to the benefits
that learning Standard English can provide. While Bolton has successfully
demonstrated the legitimacy of Hong Kong English as one of the World Englishes,
there may still be doubts in regard to adopting it as an adequate teaching model.
Another point worth noting in this book is its attempt to connect Hong Kong
English with the history of English in southern China and how this links with the
contemporary development of English language teaching in modern China. It
effectively recovers ‘the past, a past with a history of almost 370 years of Chinese-
English linguistic contact’ (p. xv), and emphasizes the local dynamics in the spread of
English in Hong Kong and China. However, contexts in which contemporary China
confronted western powers and the relevance of those confrontations to the spread of
English in China have not been given much attention. Ironically, it is the continuing
politico-economic pressure from the West that results in the ‘Chinese-English
interface’ (p. 256) and the autonomy and creativity of English in Hong Kong and
China.
As Bolton points out at the end of the book, a sociolinguistic history of English in
China is just the beginning of an understanding of ‘the unexpected present of Chinese
Englishes today’ (p. 258). Consequently, this book is a highly significant, historical
and empirical piece of research which will provoke further investigation into Chinese
Englishes.

Ó 2008 HAN-YI LIN, University of Sheffield, UK

References
Bolton, Kingsley (2000a). ‘The Sociolinguistics of English in Hong Kong.’ World Englishes
19.3: 265 – 85.
Bolton, Kingsley (2000b). ‘Researching Hong Kong English: A Guide to bibliographical
sources.’ World Englishes 19.3: 445 – 52.
Bolton, Kingsley (2002a). ‘Chinese Englishes: From Canton Jargon to Global English.’
World Englishes 21.2: 181 – 99.
118 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES

Bolton, Kingsley, ed. (2002b). Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press.
Ferguson, Gibson (2006). Language Planning and Education. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Kachru, Braj B. (1992). ‘World Englishes: Approaches, Issues and Resources.’ Language
Teaching 25: 1 – 14.
Seidlhofer, Barbara and Jenkins, Jennifer (2003). ‘English as a Lingua Franca and the
Politics of Property.’ The Politics of English as a World Language: New Horizons in
Postcolonial Cultural Studies. ASNEL Papers 7. Ed. Christian Mair. Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi. 139 – 54.

Dublin English: Evolution and Change

RAYMOND HICKEY, 2005,
Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins
270 pp. (incl. CD ROM), 90 272 4895 8, hb e120.00

This investigation, focusing on Dublin English, fills a much-needed gap in the field of
Irish English, especially if one considers that Belfast English was the subject of detailed
analysis already in the 1980s.1 Hickey’s book constitutes a thorough and well-
documented study of Dublin English. It discusses not only the phonological features
proper to the English spoken in the capital of the Republic of Ireland, but also its most
salient grammatical and lexical features and their evolution.
Based on data gathered between 2000 and 2002 (and discussed in A Sound Atlas of
Irish English),2 as well as on his own observations on changes in pronunciation in
Dublin from the late 1980s onwards, the author provides a detailed account of vowel
and consonant realisations in Dublin English. ‘The mainstream accent of Dublin
English’, he argues, ‘has functioned throughout the 20th century as the supraregional
accent of English in the south of Ireland, a quasi-standard, even if it has never been
accorded recognition as such’ (28). This quasi-standard, which is characterized by
rhotic pronunciation, dental stops, t-lenition and yod-dropping, for example,
coexists, as he points out, with two other main varieties: a local variety (of a more
conservative character) and a new variety which is closely related to Ireland’s
economic progress and to the increase in affluence that Dublin, as its capital city, has
experienced. Labels such as ‘Dublin 4’ (abbreviated as ‘D4’), or ‘Dortspeak’ came to
be used initially to refer to the new accent of those ‘people who regarded themselves
as trendy, modern, sophisticated’ (47) and who tried to dissociate themselves from
the local vernacular. This set the ground for a new variety which was adopted by
young speakers growing up in the 1990s and which concerned mostly the realisation
of vowels. The accompanying CD-ROM contains the recordings made by the
author. The CD-ROM is well organized and the recordings, which are easily located,
clearly illustrate the sounds that are being described in the book. This is an invaluable
accompaniment for those readers unfamiliar with this particular variety.
Although the balance of the book is weighted towards the phonological features of
Dublin English (over a quarter of the volume), the scope of Hickey’s investigation is
vast: the section dealing with the grammar of Dublin English offers a comprehensive
 REVIEWS 119

description of its most salient features, some of which, as the author readily admits,
are not confined to Dublin, but can also be found in other parts of Ireland. Taking on
board important results obtained from previous research into Irish English in general,3
this section puts Dublin English grammar in perspective.
The vocabulary section brings the creativity of Dubliners to the fore: augmentative
adjectives and adverbs, deliberately skewed forms, and scatological and sexual terms
are discussed alongside loanwords from Irish and retentions of English dialect input.
The section dealing with rhyming structures is particularly amusing to anyone familiar
with Dublin English. Giving names to public buildings or monuments is, indeed, a
common practice and something that vouches for the so-called ‘Dublin wit’. A practice
that is ongoing, as we can see from the various names used to refer to the Millennium
Spire, a structure resembling a gigantic needle in the centre of Dublin: the Stiletto in the
Ghetto, the Nail in the Pale, the Binge Syringe, and so on.
A most valuable aspect of this book, and an important contribution to the area of
Irish English studies, is the incorporation of the results obtained from a survey
concerning different attitudes to six different accents of English, which shows, for
example, how Irish English speakers’ prejudices against local Dublin English make
them associate this accent with a lack of education. Speakers’ perceptions and
attitudes to dialects are interesting from a sociolinguistic perspective, and, in the
context of Dublin English, these factors ‘can well play a role in the development of
new features especially when dissociation is a force in operation within a certain group
of speakers’ (p. 92).
A second survey, which also buttresses this study of Dublin English, is the Survey
of Irish English Usage (also analysed in Hickey – see note 2), whose aim was to check
the relative acceptance of a number of structures among the young population of
Ireland. The section included in the present book analyses the data obtained from the
Dublin informants, who, as one might expect, accepted the non-standard use of
the indefinite article which appears in ‘She has to go to the hospital for a check-up’, or
the use of the immediate perfective in ‘She’s after spilling the milk’, thus indicating
that both are central features of Dublin English.
The historical development of English in Ireland and in Dublin is dealt with in the
third section of the book, which uses private correspondence, literary texts and
prescriptive comments made by Dublin authors as linguistic evidence, and which I
think is a particular strength of this volume. Indeed, the detailed analysis of these
elements in the light of research carried out by other scholars in the past endows this
analysis of Dublin English with the diachronic evidence that could not be achieved
without consulting written material.
The book closes with a guide to the CD-ROM, a section dealing with lexical sets
for Dublin English and a useful glossary. It also contains some of the maps included in
the CD-ROM.
All in all, Hickey’s work provides an insightful overview of Dublin English. The
book will be of great interest to sociolinguists in addition to those interested in
Dialectology and Language Variation and Change, in particular given the rapid social
changes that Dublin has undergone even since the completion of Hickey’s research to
the present.

Ó 2008 CAROLINA AMADOR MORENO, University of Extremadura, Spain

120 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES

Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism

CORA KAPLAN, 2007
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press
184 pp., 9 78 074861146 1, pb £15.99

This readable and engaging collection of essays finds Cora Kaplan examining
visions of the Victorian past. Over four chapters Kaplan discusses a range of
contemporary representations of 19th-century culture, writing and experience,
focusing on her ‘abiding concerns about class, gender, empire and race’ alongside
a further preoccupation with ‘the high degree of affect involved in writing and
reading about the Victorian past’ (p. 5). The result of Kaplan’s readings is to
identify how what she calls ‘the ‘new’ literary humanism is represented and
elaborated in Victoriana’ (p. 161). These essays offer persuasive readings of
contemporary and 19th-century texts which locate both texts and their readers
within their particular cultural contexts. At times this particularity veers close to
excessive self-regard (there is often mention here of Kaplan’s own circumstances
and development as a critic) – however Kaplan is surely right in her insistence on
attending both to the circumstances of critics and their criticism and to the texts
they read. Each of the essays of the book deals with reimaginings of a Victorian
period whose afterlife persists in British culture inescapably: costume drama is a
staple of television and film; the achievements of Victorian technology and
engineering form the basis of bestselling books; and urban Britain holds that shape
given it by the wealth of Empire. Kaplan calls shifts in Victoriana signs of ‘the
historical imagination on the move’ (p. 3), an ongoing process of the present
coming to terms with its past. Her first chapter helps clarify her aims. Her
genealogy of criticism of Jane Eyre begins with Virginia Woolf and her ‘lethal
assault on the novel’ (p. 20) and ends with artist Paula Rego’s series of drawings
inspired by the novel. Kaplan’s chronology works to interrogate the heightened
emotions that Brontë’s novel has evoked in generations of readers and to situate
each generation of criticism within its ‘cultural grid’ (p. 25). Kaplan shows critics
as different as Virginia Woolf and Raymond Willliams caught up in responding to
the affective voice of Brontë’s text. Woolf finds the insistent angry voice of Jane
Eyre and its creator a threat to the vision of the modern(ist) woman artist whose
figure she sketches. Raymond Williams finds just this same voice as at once
constitutive of the modern novel and a threat to his own characterization of the
structures of feeling emergent in the period. It is in Rego’s drawings that Kaplan
finds a creative rereading of the novel alert to the unsettling emotional charge the
novel retains. Kaplan suggests that ‘the noughts’ (the opening years of the 21st
century) have been ‘comeback years’ for a critical humanism which focuses on
individual writing lives, resulting in a privileging of biography and autobiography.
With care she lays out the peculiar, seemingly antagonistic ways in which life
writing has at once genuinely altered our understanding of the ‘period’s lived
dimensions’ (p. 43), granting modern readers a glimpse of lives previously
forgotten, and the ways in which life writing can slip ever so quickly into
‘biographilia’ (p. 43). This chapter of the book is perhaps the most convincing and
entertaining. Kaplan’s reading of Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens (1991) dissects Ackroyd’s
 REVIEWS 121

biographical method with devastating wit and accuracy, acknowledging its

‘undeniable power as a compelling narrative’, at the same time as itemizing its
‘pretensions, its exclusions, and its queasily unsettling and downright embarrassing
moments’. (59) She clearly shows the way in which Ackroyd’s overweening
commitment to the idea of literary (male) ‘genius’ finds him highly selective in his
choice of historical and biographical detail, and archly comic in his self-regarding
presentation of his own position. If Ackroyd’s Dickens casts both author and
subject as Carlyle’s ‘Hero as Man of Letters’, the two fictional biographical
accounts to which Kaplan turns next have an odder hero. Critics before Kaplan
have remarked on the unlikelihood that Henry James should have become the
representative literary novelist for the new century, Jamesian style becoming at
once a guarantor of literary value and proving open to refashioning for page, stage
and screen. David Lodge and Colm Tóibı́n have each turned to James’s life in
their fiction, each showing a quite different man. Kaplan reads Tóibı́n’s The Master
(2004) as the more convincing novel with its emphasis on reticence and
abstention, and its masterly imaginative figuring of James’s thought. By contrast,
Kaplan finds Lodge’s novel slight. Turning from fictions of authors’ lives to
historical fiction Kaplan compares novels by four contemporary novelists which she
argues ‘highlight historical fiction’s uneasy relationship between the present and
the Victorian past’ (88). Her selection works forward chronologically from
Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, through novels by A. S. Byatt and David
Lodge, to the millennial bestsellers of Sarah Waters. Much of this chapter depends
upon relating the fictional strategies of these bestselling novels of Victoriana to
developments and movements in the contemporary university English department
and this results in an uneven mix. Kaplan is sharp in her readings of Fowles’s
text, highlighting its conservative and misogynist subtexts while emphasizing too
its successful manipulation of the form of romantic fiction. Byatt’s Possession: A
Romance (1990) is read as a text in dialogue with Fowles’s representation of
Victorian sex and sensuality, one which successfully contests Fowles’s terms but
which also in the end depends on just the neat romantic closure which Fowles had
earlier so successfully ironized. Kaplan is critical of Lodge’s finally conservative
reworking of the industrial novel in Nice Work (1989), suggesting that his satire
becomes quiescent in the face of the political scene in the 1980s. Kaplan is most
sympathetic to and impressed by the novels of Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet
(1999), Affinity (2000) and Fingersmith (2003). Acknowledging that these popular
novels provide the modern reader with what may seem escapist, nostalgic
Victoriana, she shows how Waters’s concern with marginal women and the
constraints on affection and sexual identity, represented as features of the past,
mirror the limits of contemporary representations of sexual and gendered
identities. Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) is Kaplan’s final example of
Victoriana, a film which employs melodramatic tropes of excess, strangeness and
recuperation in its portrayal of a woman’s experience in 19th-century New
Zealand. The liminal colonial scene of the film makes explicit, as Jean Rhys’s Wide
Sargasso Sea (1966) does, the debts owed but hidden by contemporary Victoriana.
Kaplan’s essays are concerned with self and subjectivity, she tells us, and these
pieces show well how our changing view of a culture and period can inform us as
122 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES

much about ourselves as it does about those texts of the past that we reread and
rewrite.

Ó 2008 STUART ROBERTSON, University of Central England, UK

Notes
1 Milroy, J. (1981) Regional Accents of English: Belfast, Belfast: Blackstaff Press (another
volume by A. Henry, Belfast English and Standard English, Oxford: Oxford UP, also
appeared in 1995, and K. McCafferty’s Ethnicity and Language Change: English in
(London)Derry, Northern Ireland, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, was published in 2000).
2 Hickey, R. (2004) A Sound Atlas of Irish English, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
3 See, for example, Filppula, M. (1999) The Grammar of Irish English: Language in
Hibernian Style, London and New York: Routledge; Kallen, J. (1989) ‘Tense and
Aspect Categories in Irish English’, English World Wide 10: 1 – 39; or Harris, J. (1984)
‘Syntactic Variation and Dialect Divergence’, Journal of Linguistics 20: 303 – 27.