98 BOOK REVIEWSconcede that 'at the end, his self-indulgence and exorbitant subjectivism preventhim from creating the kind of pure and immortal art he is aiming at' (p. 22).The question of the writer's relationship with society as a whole is boldlyenunciated by Hopewell Seyaseya, Albert Chimedza and Charles Mungoshi.Seyaseya also provides an apt retort to Ngugi's clamour for vernacular literature:Another point: Ngugi wa Thiongo can say, you must write in your own language. Forhim it is alright. For no matter what he is going to write now, it will be translated intoEnglish. Whereas for people like me, if I want my voice to be heard, it is best to write inEnglish (p. 94).Writers must be free to choose how they write and what they write about. Someof the poets cited write both in English and Shona and use the medium which bestconveys their thoughts and feelings at that particular point in time.Mrs Wild, by and large, manages to convey her sentiments clearly, althoughthe odd expression here and there reveals that English is not her mother tongue.Careful editing could, however, have ironed out clauses like: These statements aremainly based on J. Haasbroek s English commentary of Shona love poetry incollection mentioned in footnote 1 on page 18, in which he ends with thefollowing perspective . . .' (p. 19). More trying are inconsistencies andtypographical errors made when referring to anthologies or individual poems, asin: 'A storm is brewing' (p. 15) and 'A Storm is Brewing' (p. 16); 'Up-in-arms'(p. 29) and 'Up in arms' (p. 35); 'Arrow ofGod and Things fall apart'($. 31), forexample. Names have occasionally been misspelt Š as in 'Ezekiel Mphalele'(p. 26), T. O. Mdoughlin' and 'S. Mutsvairo' (p. 31).Nevertheless, as Professor Lewis Nkosi's Preface makes clear, 'for anyonewishing to achieve a certain measure of intimacy with the men and women whoproduce [the new Zimbabwean poetry], this book will undoubtedly prove to be acompulsive reading' (p. viii).Mrs Wild is to be congratulated for editing these interviews with some ofZimbabwe's younger poets, and for providing a selection of their poems, whichshould serve as a good introduction to those who are unfamiliar with their workand to those who wish to discover what compelled these poets to write. Herpublisher, Mambo Press, deserves credit for producing a well-bound volume withgood quality paper.University of Zimbabwe M. Z. MALABABetter English: A Handbook on Common Errors By M. Lewis and W. Masters.Harare, Longman Zimbabwe, 1987, 114 pp., illus., ZS7.25.The teacher of English in a second language situation is always faced with thetemptation to collect errors. Many teachers have dauntingly large, some mighteven say impressive, collections of errors painstakingly amassed almost as aby-product of the language classroom process. Once the collection begins to runto thousands of examples rather than mere hundreds, the collector makes anassumption common to all collectors: that these errors must have some value.The search for the value of the collection proceeds along predictable lines. AsBOOK REVIEWS 99is the case with matchbox labels, postage stamps, coins and the like, classification,often crude, seems the best way forward. Stamps, for example, have dates, gaugesof perforation, gum type, paper, ink colour, block-faults, etc., as their taxonomicdeterminers. However, in the case of language errors, the question why theyhappen is of greater interest than their prevalence. The question why wouldseldom be posed of stamps, coins and matchbox labels, and, when it is asked(except in the case of oblique propaganda in ancient Greek and Roman coins), theanswer is usually immediately apparent in the coin, stamp or label itself.It is unfortunate that Lewis and Masters and Longman Zimbabwe fall into thetrap of the zealous collector: the belief that the error can be explained by referenceto itself. The authors split their copious collection in two: the first part is entitled'Rules for Good Writing' and the second part is called a 'Dictionary of CommonErrors'. It is not their collecting per se that is faulty but their analysis that is naive.Lewis and Masters have an extremely rudimentary understanding of linguistics,and no familiarity at all with the development of contrastive analysis, erroranalysis and interlanguage studies in ESL. The result is that teachers will be misledby this book. For example, we witness widespread confusion of the levels oflanguage: on page 9 the reader is informed that pit and pity represent a noun-noun confusion. This is what it will look like to the LI speaker of English(Longman neither involve an L2 author nor acknowledge any L2 or linguisticconsultancy). But, contrary to the blurb on the back cover, such a classificationdoes not 'explain why the errors are wrong'. The reason for the error in thisexample is, in fact, phonotactic and syllabic and is further from grammar than theauthors may suppose: while English allows words to end with closed syllables, theCVCVCV (consonant-vowel) structure of Shona does not.Furthermore, the examples are offered as citation forms (single uncontex-tualized forms) and this further reduces any sense that the volume is based onauthentic, human-language exchanges. I can cite an actual example drawn frommy own experience of the pit/pity type. A senior Shona-speaking colleague ofmine had just delivered a superb lecture in English in which he broke new groundin the discipline in which he is an expert. As part of my congratulatory remarksafterwards^ I said 'We all have our pet subjects'. He heard and understood that Ihad said 'petty'. The whole incident required some elaborate repair on my part.It is significant that where Lewis and Masters come closer to an accurateanalysis, the work improves. The lexical component (Part II) is valuable but theauthenticity of some of the examples is questionable: were they really observed inreal life or were they demanded from the intuitions of the authors, the students,colleagues or passers-by? I expect we shall never know.This brings me to the whole subject of sampling. All language, spoken orwritten, takes place in a context. In this book we shall never know who wastalking or writing to whom when these errors were perpetrated. In fact, nomention is made of the point at which 'errors' become acceptable as ZimbabweanEnglish. If the work of Platt, Weber and Ho in Singapore can be regarded as apointer,1 a stage will have to be reached where phrases like 'cope up' or 'pick youat six' are accepted as legitimate Zimbabwean English in some measure. Lewis1 J. Platt, H. Weber, and M. L. Ho, The New Englishes (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul,1984).100 BOOK REVIEWSand Masters seem locked into the right and wrong of prescriptivism in languageand ignore any descriptive view of change in Zimbabwean English. The very titleBetter English invokes many assumptions.In many ways the meandering nature of this book could not have beenavoided: a book on errors should follow the completion of a survey ofcontemporary Zimbabwean English. At present, no one can state objectively thedegree of prevalence of these errors in the English of Zimbabweans. We don'tknow the age of the perpetrators of the errors, nor, which is much more serious,have we any idea of the level of their language development when the collectionwas made. If the readers find some of the examples eccentric or like none theyhave ever encountered, this could be to do with the fact that the authors havetaken them from speakers whose English is too poor to offer any systematicpattern of error. Singularity of this kind is not confined to a preference forgrandiloquent terms Š a frequent manifestation of pre-systematic errors.A further problem is that the competence of the same error-makers variesfrom situation to situation. Indeed, even the time they have in which to produce aparticular form has some bearing on their performance.2 Generally, speakers haveless time for the retrieval of forms than writers, and spoken/written would be afurther valuable parameter for inclusion in collections of errors.Some form of salvage might, in later editions, be undertaken by the publishersto compensate for flaws in the conception and unevenness in the presentation ofthis volume. A first step might be to discourage collectors of errors frompublishing until their skills of taxonomy have been plumbed. A collection oferrors looks temptingly like a manuscript. In the case of the present work ateachers' resource book written by a linguist could plaster over the cracks. Thatlinguist will be hard pressed to account for the mixture of language levels and theabsence of contrastive analysis and a level of discourse, to say nothing of thepresence of (if one dares to use the word) errors.Collectors will be collectors and one can expect with some confidence andtrepidation that errors will soon be collected and managed or mis-managed usingcomputers. One positive pointer is that computer software will, of its nature,invite the statement of some of classificatory parameters missing from this work.University of Zimbabwe W. E. LouwLost Chance: Southern Rhodesia 1945-58 By H. Holderness Harare, Zim-babwe Publishing House, 1985, 235 pp., ISBN 0-949932-88-4, ZS6.95.Caught in the Crossfire By Patricia Chater Zimbabwe Publishing House,Harare, 1985, 206 pp., 16 plates, ISBN 0-949932-82-5, Z$6.50.Although they are consecutive, not contemporaneous, accounts, to read togetherHardwicke Holderness's Lost Chance and Patricia Chater's Caught in theCrossfire is to have most clearly illumined the reasons for the failure of the Whiteliberal movements in the then Rhodesia and the inevitability of a war to break thedeadlock.2 S. Makoni, D. Phil, thesis in progress on Zimbabwean Interlanguage Grammars, to besubmitted at Edinburgh University.