School Sociolinguistics: A Model Kit. Review of the book Language, Society, and School under the general editorship of K. Fyodorova. 2012, New Literary Observer, Moscow

Abstract

Kirill Maslinsky, research fellow at the Sociology of Education and Science Laboratory, National Research University — Higher School of Economics — St. Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: kirill@altlinux.org 

Content and structural organization of the reviewed book is described. The reviewer determines and comments on the key issues covered in the book, such as: choosing a language of education, teaching languages in school, discursive practices widely used in schools, role of language socialization and language stereotypes in academic achievements of students. Bringing these subject matters together is explained by a strong intention to involve sociolinguistic methods and theories as much as possible into understanding school language processes. Attention is drawn to the fact that the book is a crossroads of some major subject matters that have been isolated from each other in sociolinguistics and have been studied by isolated teams of researchers who almost never appealed to each other in their studies. Thus, a comprehensive sociolinguistic view of the school is provided. An analysis is made of how the authors of the book develop a problem field dubbed as “school sociolinguistics”. Research in this area has great prospects, as collected comparison materials and analytical findings demonstrate how many school education issues should be seen through the language glass and how little attention is paid to them in Russian educational surveys.

In each chapter, the book provides an overview of general conceptual framework, known results, and numerous examples of language situations in different societies. Survey results are never transferred from one culture to another in this book. Maslinsky finds it appropriate and reasonable to apply sociolinguistic tools developed in Western studies to school education and to the modern Russian school.