What Language Is: And What It Isn't and What It Could Be

Name: What Language Is: And What It Isn't and What It Could Be
Brand: Penguin Publishing Group
SKU: 9781592407200
Price: 2117.0 INR
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by John McWhorter

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ISBN13: 9781592407200
Binding: Paperback
Subject: N/A
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publisher Imprint: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication Date: August 7, 2012
Pages: 240
Original Price: USD 27.0
Language: English
Edition: N/A
Item Weight: 182 grams
BISAC Subject(s): Linguistics / Semantics and Linguistics / Sociolinguistics

About The Book

A love letter to languages, celebrating their curiosities and smashing assumptions about correct grammar

An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, What Language Is offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. from vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, and with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does.

Packed with big ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, What Language Is explains how languages across the globe (the Queen's English and Suriname creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply, and divide. Raising provocative questions about what qualifies as a language (so-called slang does have structured grammar), McWhorter takes readers on a marvelous journey through time and place--from Persia to the languages of Sri Lanka--to deliver a feast of facts about the wonders of human linguistic expression.

About The Author

John McWhorter is the author of the bestseller Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, and four other books. He is associate professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a contributing editor to The City Journal and The New Republic. He has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, Politically Incorrect, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

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