Description: Spelling Trouble? explores the linguistic, cultural and political issues underpinning the public disputes surrounding the 1996 reform of German orthography. Sally Johnson's book will be of interest to speakers and students of German as well as sociolinguists with an interest in language politics, language planning and language ideology.
Brief description: Sally Johnson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language politics, language and gender, and the linguistics of German. She has previously published Gender, Group Identity and Variation in the Berlin Urban Vernacular (Peter Lang, 1995), Language and Masculinity (co-edited with Ulrike Hanna Meinhof - Blackwell, 1997) and Exploring the German Language (Arnold, 1998).
Review Quotes:
The book's concentration on the debates and legal rulings makes it especially insightful. This book will appeal not only to those focused on the German sociolinguistic situation but also to the wider readership interested in broader issues of the politics of standardization and the relationship between individuals, society, institutions, government and language.