This market-leading language reader features thought-provoking readings that explore the various interconnections between language and American society.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Breaking Silences
BEGINNINGS: THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE
Visual: Tower of Babel
From Hand to Mouth
Michael C. Corballis
Language and Thought
Susanne K. Langer
Horton Heared A Who!
Steven Pinker
Visual: Gimme a Cookie (cartoon)
Chunking
Ben Zimmer
Another Language for the Deaf
Margalit Fox
Visual: Signwriting
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS: COMING INTO LANGUAGE
Homemade Education
Malcolm X
A Word for Everything
Helen Keller
Visual: Sign Language
Spanish Lessons
Christine Marin
Chapter 2: Writers on Writing
THE WRITING PROCESS
Writing for an Audience
Linda Flower
Getting Started
Anne Lamott
Beware the Trap of 'Bore-geous' Writing
Ayelet Waldman
Writing to Change the World
Mary Pipher
FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS
The Case for Short Words
Richard Lederer
Saying Is Believing
Patricia T. O�Conner
Cliché�s Anyone?
James Isaacs
Visual: Writing Well (cartoon)
Selection, Slanting and Charged Language
Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B. Birk
Chapter 3: A World of Language
WHAT IS �AMERICAN� ENGLISH?
Do You Speak American?
Robert MacNeil
Everyone Has an Accent but Me
John Esling
Good English and Bad
Bill Bryson
Why Good English Is Good For You
John Simon
Why the U.S. Needs an Official Language
Mauro E. Mujica
ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE
Why a Global Language?
David Crystal
Visual: English and Globish (cartoon)
What Global Language?
Barbara Wallraff
English as a Global Language: A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?
David Redfern
Lost in America
Douglas McGray
Chapter 4: Technology and Language
MAKING CONNECTIONS IN A MODERN WORLD
In the Beginning Was the Word
Christine Rosen
Is PowerPoint the Devil?
Julia Keller
Visual: The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation and The Making of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation
Peter Norvig
Blogging in the Global Lunchroom
Geoffrey Nunberg
VIRTUALLY SPEAKING
Texting
David Crystal
Visual: If You Can�t Beat �Em . . . (cartoon)
r u online?: The evolving lexicon of wired teens
Kris Axtman
The Keypad Solution
Ammon Shea
The Other Side of E-Mail
Robert Kuttner
Three Tweets for the Web
Tyler Cowen
I Tweet, Therefore I Am
Peggy Orenstein
Chapter 5: Communication Gap
HE SAYS, SHE SAYS
Women Talk Too Much
Janet Holmes
Sex Differences
Ronald Macaulay
What Language Barrier?
Deborah Cameron
No Detail Is Too Small for Girls Answering a Simple Question
Tony Kornheiser
Visual: Men Are from Belgium, Women Are from New Brunswick (cartoon)
Oh, Mom. Oh, Honey
Deborah Tannen
Speaking Personally
John G,Guinan
WHAT WE SAY AND HOW WE SAY IT
Nonverbal Behavior: Culture, Gender, and the Media
Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael W. Gamble
Small-Scale Communication
Jennifer Akin
The Like Virus
David Grambs
Some Friends and I Started Talking: Conversation and Social Change
Margaret J. Wheatley
Chapter 6: Censorship and Free Speech
BIASED LANGUAGE AND HATE SPEECH
Hate Speech
Robin Tolmach Lakoff
Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines
Rosalie Maggio
The Word Police
Michiko Kakutani
�Nigger�: The Meaning of a Word
Gloria Naylor
CENSORSHIP AND FREE SPEECH
Regulating Racist Speech on Campus
Charles R. Lawrence, III
There�s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It�s a Good Thing Too
Stanley Fish
Freedom of Deplorable Speech
Tina Dupuy
Visual: First Amendment (cartoon)
Hate Speech Cannot be Tolerated
Richard Delgado
Chapter 7: Advertising and Print Media
THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING
With These Words I Can Sell You Anything
William Lutz
The Language of Advertising
Charles A. O�Neill
Be All That You Can Be: The Company Persona and Language Alignment
Frank Luntz
A Brand by Any Other Name
Douglas Rushkoff
Visual: Current Advertisements
THE FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA
Out of Print
Eric Alterman
Is Print Dead?
J.A. Konrath
Are We Reaching Da Youth?
Danny Schechter
Will the Death of Newspapers Also Kill Our Freedoms?
Frank Watson
Freedom of Speech and the Editorial Cartoon
Doug Marlette
Visual: Editorial Cartoons
Chapter 8: Political Wordplay
POLITICALLY SPEAKING
How to Detect Propaganda
Institute for Propaganda Analysis
Doubts About Doublespeak
William Lutz
Do You Speak Presidential?
Anna Marie Trester
Deconstructing Obama
Richard O�Mara
Fighting Words: The War over Language
Jon Hooten
Visuals: Campaign Advertisements
SPEAKING OUT: LANGUAGE THAT INSPIRED CHANGE
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King
Inaugural Address
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy�s Inaugural Address: Ask Not What Happened to Oratory
Alexandra Petri
Aren�t I a Woman?
Sojourner Truth
A More Perfect Union
Barack Obama
Visual: Obama Speech
Chapter 9: Language and the Brain
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Does Language Shape How You Think?
Guy Deutscher
You Say Up, I Say Yesterday
Joan O�C. Hamilton
How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?
Lera Boroditsky
What�s in a Word?
Sharon Begley
DIGITAL THOUGHT
Google Making Us Stoopid?
Nicolas Carr
The Internet and How We Think: Writers Offer Their Opinions
John Naughton
Your iBrain: How Technology Changes the Way We Think
Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan
Speaking in Tones: Music and Language Partner in the Brain
