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Book Reviews tries, which are under-represented in the these processes in the highly dynamic higher education and political science liter- higher education systems of Central and ature. Given the complexity and diversity Eastern Europe, which is seldom done. of their systems, the graphic representation of changes is particularly useful. I found Liudvika Leisyte the categorisation of higher education School of Government and models and their operationalisation to be Management, Twente University useful since it provides a more comprehen- [email protected] sive view of the changes in higher educa- References tion governance. At the same time, some Clark, B. 1983. The Higher Education System. Ber- points for improvement can be mentioned. keley, CA: University of California Press. Although I found the story of conver- DiMaggio, P. and W. Powell. 1983. ‘The Iron Cage gence convincing, and the comparison of Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Col- countries’ higher education legacies and lective Rationality in Organizational Fields.’ current developments useful, I would have American Sociological Review 48: 147–160. liked the indicators regarding stakeholders Hall, P. and R. Taylor. 1996. ‘Political Science and networks in the governance of higher and the Three New Institutionalisms.’ Political education to have been more prominent. Studies 44 (1): 936–957. Dobbins’ argument on the changing role of Holzinger, K. and C. Knill. 2007. ‘Ursachen und Bedingungen internationaler Politikkonver- the state in higher education governance genz.’ Pp. 85–106 in Transfer Diffusion und Kon- has been highlighted, but I am not sure vergenz von Politiken, edited by K. Holzinger, that the different roles of the state have H. Jörgens and C. Knill. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag been given enough attention, such as state für Sozialwissenschaften. regulation versus state guidance. Finally, Leisyte, L. 2002. Higher Education Governance in although managerial governance is noted Post-Soviet Lithuania. Oslo: University of Oslo, in the operationalisation of the models— Institute for Educational Research. and attributed largely to the market-based ideal-type model—I wish it had been high- lighted more, since institutional manage- James Wilson: Moravians in Prague. ment can be important not only within in- A Sociolinguistic Study of Dialect stitutions, but also at the policy level (e g. Contact in the Czech Republic via the Rectors’ Conference) and interna- Frankfurt am Main 2009: Peter Lang, tional networks. As observed in different 267 pp. countries, the Rectors’ Conferences may have a signifi cant infl uence on governance Variation sociolinguistics investigates cor- changes or stability, even though their relations between linguistic elements and managerial guidance in the institution may key social characteristics of a speaker, such be constrained by their powerful Senates. as his or her age, sex, region of origin, so- The comparative political science lens- cio-economic status, and education. It es selected in order to understand the di- might sound somewhat paradoxical to state rections of change in higher education gov- that Wilson’s study is one of only a few ernance and the reasons behind it, with a works in variation sociolinguistics based special focus on the Bologna Process, suc- on Czech and that it is actually the fi rst cessfully invigorate the debate on the dy- study on such a comparatively large scale namics of change in higher education gov- to investigate dialect contact between ernance and the institutionalisation of Eu- speakers of different varieties of Czech. The ropeanisation processes across countries, paradox follows from the fact that Czech and, most importantly, they shed light on linguists have been interested in the social 1207 Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2012, Vol. 48, No. 6 dimension of language and in the stratifi ca- they did not reach eastern and northern tion of Czech into varieties for many dec- Moravia (and the Czech-speaking part of ades, having started in the 1930s with the Silesia). In central Moravia, these changes formulation of the ‘theory of the cultiva- were received too, but here their develop- tion of language’ by the founders of the ment went further, resulting in the quite Prague Linguistic Circle. At that time they specifi c Central Moravian dialects. Today, paid closest attention to the question of the Standard Czech is not acquired as a mother literary or standard language and its codifi - tongue by children of any social group or cation. Later, since the beginning of the in any region in the Czech Republic; con- 1960s, the version of Czech used widely as versely, Common Czech is not socially re- a vernacular or interdialect, usually called stricted, but is limited territorially. Stand- Common (or Colloquial) Czech, its relation ard Czech has higher prestige in Moravia, to Standard Czech and its territorial distri- and speakers of Moravian (inter)dialects bution have become central to linguists’ have an innate sense that their language is discussions and even quite harsh polemics, ‘purer’ and closer to the Standard than which recommenced with new vigour after Common Czech is. This seeming proximity 1989. Nonetheless, the arguments used in may be questioned easily. There is actually these debates relied for the most part on plenty of agreement between Common and linguistic introspection and the native- Standard Czech in such features as voice speaker intuition of their participants and assimilation, most nominal declension, and on studies carried out by the methods of certain syntactical constructions, which traditional dialectology. Only in recent have different forms in Moravian dialects. years have some linguists started to refer to James Wilson studies dialect contact newly established linguistic corpora. It is between Moravian students living at a therefore not so surprising that researchers Prague students’ dormitory and their new who cannot rely on native-speaker intui- —Common Czech-speaking—environment. tion, i.e. foreign bohemists, predominate One of the objectives of his research is to among authors of the few variationist or verify the contact hypothesis formulated quantitative sociolinguistic studies on the by Petr Sgall, a renowned Czech linguist Czech language situation. The book under who has long advocated Common Czech review is a case in point. as the majority vernacular. This hypothesis The language situation addressed by predicts that, having moved to live in Bo- Wilson’s research is in some respects com- hemia, speakers of Moravian dialects drop parable with situations of dialect contact in some features of their local vernaculars various other language communities, but and assimilate features of Common Czech there are also some features unique to the [Sgall and Hronek 1992: 90]. As vague as Czech language situation, arising from the this contact hypothesis is formulated, it is complicated historical development of quite banal and the result of its testing Standard Czech. The current standard is comes as no surprise either to Wilson or to considerably archaic as it does not include anyone who has some knowledge of previ- certain phonological and morphological ous dialect contact researches wherever changes which were already fully stabi- these have been conducted. Yes, Moravian lised in the speech of Prague and Bohemia migrants do assimilate Common Czech at the time when the modern standard was features after some period of residence in established at the beginning of the 19th Prague. (Admittedly, the accommodation century. These changes now represent fea- of the fi rst migrant generation is usually tures typical of Common Czech, the ver- never complete.) But what is really inter- nacular spoken throughout Bohemia, but esting and what Wilson actually investi- 1208 Book Reviews gates are such questions as: By what route In the second part, the author asked direct does the accommodation take place? Is questions about the interviewee’s attitudes there a sort of fi xed route of linguistic ac- to language. commodation as has been claimed by, Wilson focused on three phonological among others, Peter Trudgill [1986]? What and three grammatical variables whose us- new forms are acquired more widely, ear- age could be considered a measure of ac- lier and with greater ease, which ones are commodation to Common Czech. Phono- picked up later or even never? Who are the logical variables are the most studied in people who accommodate early, easily, variation linguistics, as they are easy to most new forms and who are those who elicit because of their high frequency in are resistant to a new dialect longer? And speech. This does not apply to the same ex- how does this correlate with their social tent to grammatical variables, as the author characteristics? was also able to confi rm, for out of the Wilson’s informants are 18 men and three chosen grammatical variables only 22 women, representing proportionally all one occurred in statistically relevant num- three main Moravian dialect regions. Most bers. The author is precise and cautious in of them were living at one student dormi- his analysis, having divided both the lin- tory in Prague at the time of the research guistic and independent variables into fur- and were studying medicine. Students of ther sub-variables, selecting and further some other subjects such as sports science testing those correlations which turned out were included too, but Wilson avoided hu- to be indeed statistically signifi cant. Being manities students, supposing that their properly circumspect about drawing con- language awareness is higher than is typi- clusions, he also tests how the independ- cal of the whole population. He investi- ent variables interact among themselves. gates the correlation of their assimilation For instance, at fi rst glance women seemed of Common Czech with four primary so- to accommodate to Common Czech much cial parameters—gender, region of origin, more readily than men, exceeding them in network integration, and length of resi- the use of all but one of the variables being dence—and three other (secondary) social studied.

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