Linguistics For Everyone

LINGUISTICS FOR EVERYONE, 2E, International Edition connects the study of linguistics to the language you use every day. The text is very user-friendly: casual writing style, logical presentation of material, balance of theoretical and practical, entertaining information, and lots of ideas and activities to put what you learn to use right away. The first chapter gives you the basics such as how to define language, new ways to look at grammar, your innate knowledge about language. Later chapters address core linguistics areas in depth (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics). Many innovative and varied activities help you review and practice the content and apply the knowledge immediately. Special features throughout the book demystify common curiosities about how language works.

LINGUISTICS FOR EVERYONE: AN INTRODUCTION, First Edition is designed to capture the interest of all students, regardless of major, and offer them a thorough, engaging introduction to the science of language. To achieve this goal, they devised a unique arrangement of chapters that distinguishes this book from conventional introductory linguistics textbooks. Without sacrificing rigor, they focus on larger themes rather than on technical details or formal analysis. The book opens with a strong introductory chapter addressing basics such as how to define language, prescriptive versus descriptive grammar, differences between the human language system and other animal communication systems, and so on. The second chapter, devoted to language, mind, and brain, addresses both psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic evidence for humans' innate capacity for language. To address core linguistics areas in depth, there are two chapters each on phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Throughout the text, special features relate the study of linguistics to the language we use in the real world and every chapter includes innovative and varied activities that review and practice the content and offer your students many opportunities to apply the knowledge in their own lives. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Why Study Linguistics is designed to help anyone with an interest in studying language understand what linguistics is, and what linguists do. Exploring how the scientific study of language differs from other ways of investigating this uniquely human behavior, Why Study Linguistics:? explores the various topics that students of linguistics study, including sound systems of language, the structure of words and sentences and their meanings, and the wider social context of language change and language variation;? explains what you might do with a degree in linguistics and the kinds of jobs and careers that studying linguistics prepares you for; is supported by a list of links to additional resources available online.? This book is the first of its kind and will be essential reading for anyone considering a course of study in this fascinating subject, as well as teachers, advisors, student mentors, and anyone who wants to know more about the scientific study of language.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!! Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer “Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” —Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

This accessible textbook offers balanced and uniformly excellent coverage of modern linguistics.

This introductory textbook provides readers with a foundation in methods for analysing and understanding language from various theoretical perspectives within linguistics and language studies. Its novel approach introduces systemic functional linguistics, text and discourse analysis, and formal approaches to linguistics. It demonstrates applications of these approaches to reveal how we use language in society, how our brains process language, and how we learn language. Topics include phonetics, phonology, conversation analysis, morphology, semantics, functional and formal syntax, text linguistics, genre analysis, evaluative lexis in text, multimodal representations of meaning, language change and variation, animals and language, the brain and language, and first and second language development/acquisition. The main language focused on is English, while other languages are also drawn on to illustrate the principles, models and theories. Learning outcomes, exercises (with answer key), ideas for project work, and questions for reflection are provided throughout. A final chapter gathers explanations of various fields of practice within linguistics, written by linguists from around the world, including David Crystal (Clinical Linguistics), Frances Christie (Educational Linguistics), and Malcolm Coulthard (Forensic Linguistics). An Introduction to Linguistics and Language Studies offers an array of analytical tools for undergraduate students of language, communication, and education, and provides an overview of the field for those interested in further study in linguistics and applied language studies. Readers will come away with a heightened sensitivity to and appreciation of their own and other's use of language for creating meaning and for interaction.

When it was first published in 1957, Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structure seemed to be just a logical expansion of the reigning approach to linguistics. Soon, however, there was talk from Chomsky and his associates about plumbing mental structure; then there was a new phonology; and then there was a new set of goals for the field, cutting it off completely from its anthropological roots and hitching it to a new brand of psychology. Rapidly, all of Chomsky's ideas swept the field. While the entrenched linguists were not looking for a messiah, apparently many of their students were. There was a revolution, which colored the field of linguistics for the following decades. Chomsky's assault on Bloomfieldianism (also known as American Structuralism) and his development of Transformational-Generative Grammar was promptly endorsed by new linguistic recruits swelling the discipline in the sixties. Everyone was talking of a scientific revolution in linguistics, and major breakthroughs seemed imminent, but something unexpected happened--Chomsky and his followers had a vehement and public falling out. In The Linguistic Wars, Randy Allen Harris tells how Chomsky began reevaluating the field and rejecting the extensions his students and erstwhile followers were making. Those he rejected (the Generative Semanticists) reacted bitterly, while new students began to pursue Chomsky's updated vision of language. The result was several years of infighting against the backdrop of the notoriously prickly sixties. The outcome of the dispute, Harris shows, was not simply a matter of a good theory beating out a bad one. The debates followed the usual trajectory of most large-scale clashes, scientific or otherwise. Both positions changed dramatically in the course of the dispute--the triumphant Chomskyan position was very different from the initial one; the defeated generative semantics position was even more transformed. Interestingly, important features of generative semantics have since made their way into other linguistic approaches and continue to influence linguistics to this very day. And fairly high up on the list of borrowers is Noam Chomsky himself. The repercussions of the Linguistics Wars are still with us, not only in the bruised feelings and late-night war stories of the combatants, and in the contentious mood in many quarters, but in the way linguists currently look at language and the mind. Full of anecdotes and colorful portraits of key personalities, The Linguistics Wars is a riveting narrative of the course of an important intellectual controversy, and a revealing look into how scientists and scholars contend for theoretical glory.

Questions About Language sets out to answer, in a readable yet insightful format, a series of vital questions about language, some of which language specialists are regularly asked, and some of which are so surprising that only the specialists think about them. In this handy guide, sixteen language experts answer challenging questions about language, from What makes a language a language? to Do people swear because they don’t know enough words? Illustrating the complexity of human language, and the way in which we use it, the twelve chapters each end with a section on further reading for anyone interested in following up on the topic. Covering core questions about language, this is essential reading for both students new to language and linguistics and the interested general reader.