Fishman's article aligns Benjamin Lee Whorf with a "neo-Herderian" pluralism in language study, one that values multiple linguistic persectives as each contributing in their own way to the human tapestry, with a good look at Whorf's context (where English is the ideal language because we don't have to devote our energies to communication, because it is so magnificently designed, and so instead we can focus on conquest!). Fishman connects this to a broader interplay between an ethnocentric, essentialist but also ethnopluralistic strain in Western culture rooted in the Hebraic and Greek traditions and a liberal, imperial universalism exemplified by Rome, the Catholic Church, and modern Anglo-capitalism. He sees Whorfianism of the third kind (in contrast to the first and second kinds, linguistic relativism and determinism respectively) as having an important role to play mediating between these strains. Those are big ideas, and Fishman's prose isn't really up to the task--he writes about them in a weirdly inspirationless manner. But this is still an important article. Language in Society. ( )