The Workings of Language: From Prescriptions to Perspectives

by Wheeler, Rebecca S.

• ISBN13: 9780275962463
• ISBN10: 0275962466
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-30
• Publisher: Greenwood Pub Group

Summary

Defusing chicken-little prognostications about English, this volume suggests that dark claims about language are not to be taken at face value. Instead, these claims function as a signal: time to step back. Offering just such a time-out, eminent linguists explore the fuller picture underlying language in our society, examining prescriptivism, Black English, Ozark English, American Sign Language, English-Only, and Endangered Languages. After helping stomp out such linguistic fires, the linguists showcase the potent workings of language: world englishes, language and politics, media, prejudice, creativity, gender, and humor, thus opening the way to better informed views on the function of language in schools, and more linguistically-sound public policies.

Author Biography

REBECCA S. WHEELER teaches writing, grammar, and linguistics in the English Department at Christopher Newport University in Virginia.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Rebecca S. Wheeler
I. Ways of Talking
The Language Mavens	3	(12)
Steven Pinker
North American Varieties of English as Byproducts of Population Contacts	15	(24)
Salikoko S. Mufwene
African American Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes	39	(20)
Geoffrey K. Pullum
Home Speech as Springboard to School Speech: Oakland's Commendable Work on Ebonics	59	(8)
Rebecca S. Wheeler
Southern Mountain English: The Language of the Ozarks and Southern Appalachia	67	(14)
Bethany K. Dumas
On the Other Hand: American Sign Language, Signed Englishes, and Other Visual Language Systems	81	(10)
Lynn S. Messing
II. Englishes, English-only, and Languages in Danger of Extinction
``From Out in Left Field? That's Not Cricket'': Finding a Focus for the Language Curriculum	91	(16)
David Crystal
Investigating English around the World: The International Corpus of English	107	(10)
Gerald Nelson
Bas Aarts
Speaking of America: Why English-Only Is a Bad Idea	117	(12)
Geoffrey Nunberg
Language Loss, Our Loss	129	(10)
Mari Rhydwen
III. Language and Politics, Prejudice, the Media, Creativity, Humor, and Gender
Metaphor, Morality, and Politics: Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust	139	(18)
George Lakoff
Language as a Weapon of Hate	157	(8)
Rae A. Moses
Language and the News Media: Five Facts about the Fourth Estate	165	(16)
Colleen Cotter
Life on Mars: Language and the Instruments of Invention	181	(20)
Mark Turner
Gilles Fauconnier
Laughing at and Laughing with: The Linguistics of Humor and Humor in Literature	201	(10)
Victor Raskin
Women and Men in Conversation	211	(6)
Deborah Tannen
Breaking Mythical Bonds: African American Women's Language	217	(16)
Denise Troutman
Index	233	(12)
About the Editor and Contributors	245