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"Taking readers on a rollicking ride through history, a master storyteller and reporter, whose legend began in journalism, presents a paradigm-shifting argument that speech, not evolution, is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements"--NoveList.
"Before Tom Wolfe was a bestselling novelist, he was a groundbreaking journalist. Now the maestro storyteller turns his attention to the mystery behind the creation of his own most important...
Author
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English
Formats
Description
"We gravitate toward people like us; it's human nature. Race, class, and gender affect this social identity, but one overlooked factor can be even more powerful: the way we speak. As pioneering psychologist Katherine Kinzler reveals in How You Say It, that's because our speech largely reflects the voices we heard as children. We can change how we speak to some extent, whether by "code-switching" between dialects or learning a new language. But for...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"We gravitate toward people like us; it's human nature. Race, class, and gender affect this social identity, but one overlooked factor can be even more powerful: the way we speak. As pioneering psychologist Katherine Kinzler reveals in How You Say It, that's because our speech largely reflects the voices we heard as children. We can change how we speak to some extent, whether by "code-switching" between dialects or learning a new language. But for...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 525
Language
English
Description
The languages of the world can be seen and heard in cities and towns, forests and isolated settlements, as well as on the internet and in international organizations like the UN or the EU. How did the world acquire so many languages? Why can't we all speak one language, like English or Esperanto? And what makes a person bilingual? Multilingualism, language diversity in society, is a perfect expression of human plurality. About 6,500-7,000 languages...
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Language
English
Formats
Description
The word bitch conjures many images for many people, but it is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn't refer to gender at all--it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy--which simply meant housewife--or slut, which meant an untidy person and was also used to...
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Language
English
Description
This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned...
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Language
English
Description
Part travelogue and part scientist's notebook, The Last Speakers is the poignant chronicle of author K. David Harrison's expeditions around the world to meet with last speakers of vanishing languages. The speakers' eloquent reflections and candid photographs reveal little-known lifeways as well as revitalization efforts to teach disappearing languages to younger generations. Thought-provoking and engaging, this unique book illuminates the global language-extinction...
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Language
English
Description
Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves between Washington insider talk and culturally Black ways of speaking—as shown in a famous YouTube clip, where Obama declined the change offered to him by a Black cashier in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with the phrase, "Nah, we straight." In Articulate While Black, two renowned scholars of Black Language address...
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English
Description
"A presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton explores the hidden power of analogy to fuel thought, connect ideas, spark innovation, and shape outcomes From the meatpacking plants that inspired Henry Ford's first moving assembly line to the "domino theory" that led America into Vietnam to the "bicycle for the mind" that Steve Jobs envisioned as the Macintosh computer, analogies have played a dynamic role in shaping the world around us-and still do...
Author
Language
English
Description
"What exactly is African American Vernacular English? Learn about this interesting and unique language, as well as how it fits into modern society in the children's book Language in Society. This kid's book takes children on a linguistic journey to learn about the differences between AAVE and other languages. The nonfiction book features before- and after-reading questions, a photo glossary, and an extension activity to enhance reading comprehension...
Author
Language
English
Description
A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain--as most linguists do--but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A bestselling linguist takes us on a lively tour of how the English language is evolving before our eyes and why we should embrace this transformation and not fight it. Language is always changing -- but we tend not to like it. We understand that new words must be created for new things, but the way English is spoken today rubs many of us the wrong way. Whether its the use of literally to mean "figuratively" rather than "by the letter" or the way...
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Language
English
Description
"It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what language is. Steven Roger Fischer charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, as he analyses the emergence of language as a science and its development as a written...
Series
Language
English
Description
Language is fascinating. It defines humans as a species, placing us head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. Professor McWhorter explores many of the common questions about language, such as: Why isn't there just a single language? Or, How does a language change, and when it does, is that change indicative of decay or growth? In short, everything about a language is eternally and inherently changeable, from its word...
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Language
English
Description
"I'm not hanging noodles on your ears." In Moscow, this curious, engagingly colorful assertion is common parlance, but unless you're Russian your reaction is probably "Say what?" The same idea in English is equally odd: "I'm not pulling your leg." Both mean: Believe me.
As author Jag Bhalla demonstrates, these amusing, often hilarious phrases provide a unique perspective on how different cultures perceive and describe the world. Organized by theme-food,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Despite the many thousands of dictionary words at our disposal, our language can be dismayingly inadequate. How many times have you searched for a word that means just what you want it to but failed to find anything suitable anywhere? Most of us, it turns out, lead lives rife with experiences, people, and things that have no names.
At least, they lacked names until now. Word Fugitives comes to the rescue, supplying hundreds of inspired words coined...
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