This market-leading language reader features thought-provoking readings that explore the various interconnections between language and American society.

For more than 25 years, this engaging reader has challenged students to critically examine how language affects and constructs culture and how culture constructs and affects language. This thirteenth edition maintains the integrity of past editions while reflecting the new and fascinating language issues that exist in today's culture. Provocative selections are organized around nine major topics, and then broken into stimulating sub-themes like the connections between gender and language differences, hate speech, the language of war, and censorship on campus, inviting students to debate current social and cultural issues that are inseparable from language.

Introduction:

Critical Reading

* Critical Writing

Chapter 1: Language Evolution: Learning to Speak

· From Hand to Mouth, Michael C. Corballis

· Language and Thought, Susanne K. Langer

· Horton Heared A Who!, Steven Pinker

· Chunking, Ben Zimmer

· Another Language for the Deaf, Margalit Fox

· Visual: SignWriting (

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Chapter 2: Coming into Language: Personal Recollections

· Homemade Education, Malcolm X

· A Word for Everything, Helen Keller

· Visual: Sign Language

· Spanish Lessons, Christine Marin

· The Language of Silence, Maxine Hong Kingston

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Chapter 3: Say What? Language in Action

· 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

· The Like Virus, David Grambs

· Why the U.S. Needs an Official Language, Mauro E. Mujica

· Why a Global Language?, David Crystal

· Lost in America, Douglas McGray

Chapter 4: Language and Technology: Forging Connections

· In the Beginning Was the Word, Christine Rosen

· Texting, David Crystal

· Visual: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em . . . (cartoon)

· r u online?: The evolving lexicon of wired teens, Kris Axtman

· Three Tweets for the Web, Tyler Cowen

· I Tweet, Therefore I Am, Peggy Orenstein

Chapter 5: Language Differences: Please Understand Me!

· Women Talk Too Much, Janet Holmes

· What Language Barrier?, Deborah Cameron

· Oh, Mom. Oh, Honey, Deborah Tannen

· Nonverbal Behavior, Teri Kwal Gamble & Michael W. Gamble

· [Need piece on language anonymity conversation, and debate online]

· Small-Scale Communication, Jennifer Akin

· Some Friends and I Started Talking, Margaret J. Wheatley

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Chapter 6: Language Sensitivity: Can We Speak Freely?

· Hate Speech, Robin Tolmach Lakoff

· Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines, Rosalie Maggio

· Excerpt from Diane Ravitch

· The Word Police, Michiko Kakutani

· “Nigger”: The Meaning of a Word, Gloria Naylor

· · Hate Speech Cannot be Tolerated, Richard Delgado

· There is No Such Thing as Free Speech, Stanley Fish

Chapter 7: The Language Advertising: Words that Sell

· 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 Lunt

· · Visual: Current Advertisements

Chapter 8: Language in Print

· 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

· Piece on cursive writing

· Death of books—libraries with no books

Chapter 9: Political Wordplay

· How to Detect Propaganda, Institute for Propaganda Analysis

· Doubts About Doublespeak, William Lutz

· Politics and the English Language, George Orwell

· Fighting Words: The War over Language, Jon Hooten

· Poly-speak. Speechwriting. How to write a great speech.

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