The State Of The Language
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The State of the Language
Author: Philip Howard
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 1985
Is the English language in decline? Many people seem to think so--but Philip Howard isn't one of them. The Literary Editor of The Times of London, Howard takes a robust, commonsensical view of the changes that are happening in English. His is not the Panglossian attitude that all is neccessarily for the best in the best of all possible languages, but he does feel that change is necessary--and healthy--in any living language. Howard here examines the language in its various branches and categories, such as grammar and pronunciation, spelling and punctuation, dialect and slang. He discusses the effect the new technologies, from cable TV to photocomposition, are having on the mother tongue, and he examines the new dialects that are coming into use. He navigates the back streets of euphemism and the broad, boring boulevards of cliche. He asks whether the language is actually changing as fast as we suppose, and, if so, why. Howard argues that as far as we can, we should strive to direct and control the changes in English in ways that increase its power. And where we can't help it, he says, we should lie back and enjoy its immense richness, which is unrivaled by any other language. Rather than have us wring our hands, Philip Howard entreats us, with his customary with and erudition, to use our tongues in concert with our brains. About the Author: Philip Howard is the author of New Words for Old, Weasel Words, Words Fail Me, and, most recently, A Word in Your Ear.
The State of the Language
Author: Leonard Michaels
language: en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date: 1980-01-01
Considers a wide range of topics related to contemporary language
The State of the Language
Author: Christopher Ricks
language: en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date: 2024-06-21
"Sprawling, uncoordinated, uneven, noisy, and appealing," wrote one reviewer of the first edition of this book, published on 1 January 1980. "The language is in rude health," wrote another. Exactly a decade later, here is the book anew, with the same editors but with fifty fresh contributors writing essays and poems that engage our language today. Imaginative attention is bestowed on the changes of recent years, changes not only in the language but in how language is understood. In the forefront are the relations between British English, American English, and those other Englishes with which they compete or cooperate. The nervous negotiations of gender and feminism. The darkness of AIDS. The bright flicker of the computer. The old smolderings of "standard English" and correctness. The "bad language" that has lately done so well in our society. How all this has been politicized—or is it rather that its inevitably political nature has only now been recognized? Here these and many other facets of the language catch the various light. What has changed is understood in relation to what has not changed, and what has been gained in relation to what has been lost. There is sweep as well as detail, telescope as well as microscope, in this contemplation of the world of our language as it enters the world of the 1990s. The State of the Language has been prepared in cooperation with the English-Speaking Union of San Francisco. Some titles of essays in the book: Whose English? by Sidney Greenbaum Look, Ma, I'm Talking by Sandra Gilbert Fighting Talk by Marina Warner No Opera Please—We're British by Michael Bawtree Changing What We Sing by Margaret Doody On Not Being Milton: Nigger Talk in England Today by David Dabydeen Talking Black by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Subway Graffiti by Walter J. Ong Doublespeak by William Lutz It's a Myth, Innit? Politeness and the English Tag Question by John Algeo This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.