This book is an important and useful contribution
to the literature on language shift, especially for readers
interested in this issue in American Indian communities. House
focuses on discrepancies between public discourse about what
it means to be a Navajo person and “undiscussed, yet highly
visible, linguistic and behavioral practices” –
that is, between conscious, discursive ideology and more
unconscious, behavioral ideology as revealed through social
practice. She challenges the widespread claim in the Navajo
community for the existence of Navajo cultural homogeneity,
arguing that although such essentializing discourse may have
political, economic, and spiritual motivations, it is also
unrealistic and complicates efforts to reverse language shift.