Bernard Spolsky defines language management as “an attempt by some person or body … claiming authority to modify the language practices or beliefs of a group of speakers … . It assumes the existence of choice … and depends on the existence or perception of a significant conflict between two or more languages, varieties or salient variables” (181). Nine of the book's thirteen chapters examine language management in a particular domain, beginning with the family and moving through religion, the workplace, public space, school, law and healthcare, the military, local and national government, and supranational organizations like the United Nations and the European Union. In each domain Spolsky considers the kinds of communication that have to be managed, who the managers are, and how their efforts are affected by various pressures—some internal to the domain in question and some emanating from outside it. Two chapters focus on the contribution of grassroots activist groups and that of quasi-official agencies such as national-language academies. The introduction proposes a theoretical model of language management, which is revisited and refined in the conclusion.

As Spolsky points out, his domain-based approach departs from the traditional preoccupation with policy and planning at the level of the nation-state, instead emphasizing the involvement of multiple agents operating at different levels and pursuing competing goals. One reason why government-sponsored initiatives often fail is that they conflict with the ideologies and practices promoted in other domains. For instance, ambitious parents may reject the state's policy of mother-tongue medium schooling and prefer private English-medium schools because of the status of English in domains such as business. In Canada, attempts to make the armed forces bilingual have had limited success: affirming the equality of French and English may be important at the level of national politics, but for the military, whose priority is operational efficiency, it is seen as irrelevant or even detrimental. In Israel, by contrast, the same concern with efficiency (and the same view that it is maximized by the use of a single language) has made the military an active promoter of the government's language policy, through its provision of Hebrew language instruction for immigrant recruits.

The range of domains Spolsky covers is a valuable feature of his book: I found the chapters on religious and military language management particularly useful, since these areas are not always treated by other writers. One might question, though, the decision not to treat either politics (as distinct from government) or the mass media as domains in their own right. The media are subsumed into a chapter on public space, whose most substantial section deals with signage: the resulting discussion does not do justice to the importance of the broadcast media in particular as sites for language management in modern times.

I welcome Spolsky's broad definition of language management, but it is disappointing to discover that he does not follow its logic by considering a correspondingly broad range of instances. Though the passage quoted above refers to “languages, varieties [and] salient variables,” the examples discussed are overwhelmingly cases where the problem being managed is the relationship between languages, and by extension between ethnolinguistic groups. Cases where the issue is intra-language variation, and where the underlying social conflict arises from other kinds of difference/inequality, are mentioned only occasionally and in passing. In some areas this struck me as a significant limitation.

A case in point is the chapter on law and healthcare, which focuses on the provision of translation and interpreting services for minority language-users. Yet these are domains where the use of highly formal and technical registers poses problems for many majority speakers, too—particularly the poorest and least educated, who, like ethnic minorities, tend to be over-represented among the criminalized and the chronically sick. Such language-internal problems may also be targets for management. Rock (Reference Rock2007) has documented the strategies developed by police officers in England and Wales to deal with the fact that most people they arrest do not understand the official caution (“you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court”). One of the early objectives of Britain's Plain English Campaign was to simplify the language used on prescription medicine labels, after it emerged that large numbers of people could not decode instructions like “do not exceed the stated dose.” Another example this chapter might have considered is the development of protocols for eliciting credible witness testimony, or in the medical domain informed consent, from members of groups defined as “vulnerable,” such as young children and people with learning disabilities. In England in 2009, a man was convicted of rape on the evidence of a four-year-old girl: opinions differed on whether this was desirable, but without language management it would not have been possible.

Examples like these deserve attention not only because of their intrinsic interest, but also because of the theoretical insights that may emerge when they are placed alongside the inter-language cases. Because it concentrates so heavily on the latter, Spolsky's model has a tendency to reproduce assumptions that could usefully have been interrogated. For example, a theme he takes up in several chapters is the increasing impact of human-rights discourses, codified in international declarations and charters, on contemporary language management. The legal domain provides a striking illustration: advocates can now argue that the human right to a fair trial entails the right of the accused to hear the charges and the evidence in a language s/he understands. But while this has undoubtedly been a significant development, a good theoretical account of it should surely ask questions about the nature and limits of that significance: who has benefited, who has not, and what that tells us about the language (and other) ideologies that Spolsky rightly identifies as an important influence on language management. It is striking that in practice, linguistic human rights tend to be equated fairly narrowly with the rights of minority ethnic or national groups. The right of an accused person to hear court proceedings in a language s/he understands is not generally extended to cases where the defendant does not command the relevant variety. Some accommodation may be made to the special needs of “vulnerable” groups such as children and the learning-disabled, but not to those who are disadvantaged by subaltern class status. Only a few radical activists, like the UK Plain English Campaign's founder Chrissie Maher, go so far as to assert that any official communication couched in language unintelligible to the recipient must be considered a violation of his or her rights. The fact that such different attitudes prevail in relation to different kinds of language problems and the associated social divisions/ inequalities seems to me to raise important questions; but by treating a particular subset of problems as prototypical, Spolsky misses the opportunity to pursue them.

On the issues he does explore, however, Spolsky's treatment has many strengths: it is concise but informative, balanced in its assessments, and the examples range widely in both space and time. On behalf of the students to whom I will in the future be recommending this text, I also appreciated his insistence on placing language conflict in its wider political context, avoiding “linguicentrism” (the idea that linguistic intolerance or oppression is the cause rather than the effect of other kinds): he has no time for unreconstructed Whorfians, conspiracy theorists, and the sort of activist whose response to mass slaughter in Rwanda or Sudan is to indict the government's neglect of vernacular education. He also points out that language managers' preoccupations are often more absurd than sinister, and that their efforts frequently come to nothing.

This book does a good job of showing how many ways there are for language management not to achieve its aims: though Spolsky counsels against attributing its failures to any single cause, his examples suggest that one common contributing factor is managers' limited understanding of the behavior they aim to modify. This leads him to wonder in his conclusion whether linguists should aim to improve the effectiveness of language management—for instance, by developing general models like his own that could then be applied to particular problems—or whether they should take the view that “the enterprise is basically undesirable” (261). Many linguists have, of course, expressed similar reservations; but if you believe (as I do) that humans will never be persuaded to leave their languages alone, then attempts to manage language, whatever we may think of them and whether or not we choose to become involved in any of them, are part of the reality that it is linguists' business to study. To that enterprise, this book makes a worthwhile contribution. Though I might wish Spolsky had ranged over more of the territory encompassed by his own definition, in the areas he does cover he is a knowledgeable and sure-footed guide.