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Summary
Summary
This introduction to the structure of English, general theories in linguistics and important issues in sociolinguistics provides extensive coverage of issues of particular interest to English majors and future English instructors.
Author Notes
Anne Curzan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and School of Education. In 2007, she received an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. She is the author of Gender Shifts in the History of English (Cambridge UP, 2003) and co-author of First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student's Guide to Teaching (U of Michigan P, 2006). She currently serves as co-editor of the Journal of English Linguistics .
Michael Adams teaches English language and literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. For fifteen years, he taught at Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he also served as chair of the Department of English and associate academic dean; he has been a visiting professor at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Iceland. He is the author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon (Oxford UP, 2003) and Slang: The People's Poetry (Oxford UP, 2009), as well as contributing editor to Word Histories and Mysteries: Abracadabra to Zeus (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). He was editor of Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America for several years; currently, he is editor of the quarterly journal American Speech .
Table of Contents
Abbreviationsâ | p. xx |
Preface to Instructors | p. xxiii |
Letter to Students | p. xxviii |
Chapter 1 A Language like English | |
1 The Story of Aks | |
2 Language, Language Everywhere | |
4 The Power of Language | |
4 Name Calling | |
5 Judging by Ear | |
5 A Question to Discuss: What Makes Us Hear an Accent? | |
6 The System of Language | |
7 Arbitrariness and Systematicity | |
8 A Scholar to Know:Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) | |
9 Creativity | |
10 Grammar | |
10 Linguistics | |
11 Human Language versus Animal Communication | |
12 Birds and Bees | |
13 Chimps and Bonobos | |
14 Distinctive Characteristics of Human Language | |
18 The Process of Language Change | |
19 Language Genealogies | |
20 A Question to Discuss: Do Languages Have Families? | |
22 Mechanics of Language Change | |
23 Progress or Decay? | |
23 Attitudes about Language Change | |
24 Special Focus: Evolution of Human Language | |
25 Summary | |
28 Suggested Reading | |
29 Exercises | |
29 Chapter | |
2 Language and Authority | |
33 Who Is in Control? | |
34 Language Academies | |
34 Language Mavens | |
35 Defining Standard English | |
36 Descriptive versus Prescriptive Grammar Rules | |
38 Case Study One: Double Negatives | |
39 Case Study Two: Ainrsquo;t | |
40 Case Study Three: Who and Whom | |
40 The Status of Prescriptive Rules | |
41 Spoken versus Written Language | |
42 A Question to Discuss: Which Is More Permanent, the Written or Spoken Word? | |
43 Language and Society: Are We Losing Our Memories? | |
45 Dictionaries of English | |
45 The Earliest Dictionaries of English | |
46 The Beginnings of Modern Lexicography | |
46 Historical Lexicography | |
47 American Lexicography | |
48 A Question to Discuss:Should Dictionaries Ever Prescribe? | |
50 English Grammar, Usage, and Style | |
51 The Earliest Usage Books | |
51 Prescriptive versus Descriptive Tendencies in Grammars of English | |
52 Modern Approaches to English Usage | |
53 Special Focus: Corp |