A01=Mark Halpern
Academic Linguists
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Air Force
Alaska Native Language Center
Author_Mark Halpern
automatic-update
British National Corpus
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JHB
Chomskyan Revolution
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
descriptive linguistics
Double Entry
Double Entry Bookkeeping
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Eskimo Languages
Foreign Terms
Geoffrey Nunberg
Golem Project
Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax
House Cat
Ice Terms
Jacques Barzun
language authority
Language_English
linguistic formalism
Modern English Usage
North Slope Borough
PA=Available
prescriptivist descriptivist debate
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
Public Information Officer
Racial Observer
rhetoric revival
Ruth Berlau
Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
scientific critique of linguistics
semantic change
softlaunch
Sprague De Camp
Turing Test
Turing's Imitation Game
Turing’s Imitation Game
Younger Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781138526884
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Oct 2017
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
"Language and Human Nature" exposes a century's worth of flawed thinking about language, to exhibit some of the dangers it presents, and to suggest a path to recovery. It begins by examining the causes of changes in the English vocabulary. These sometimes take the form of new words, but more often that of new senses for old words. In the course of this examination, Halpern discusses a wide variety of verbal solecisms, vulgarisms, and infelicities generally. His objective is not to deplore such things, but to expose the reasons for their existence, the human traits that generate them.A large part of this book is devoted to contesting the claims of academic linguists to be the only experts in the study of language change. Language is too central to civilized life to be so deeply misunderstood without causing a multitude of troubles throughout our culture. We are currently experiencing such troubles, a number of which are examined here. The exposure of linguists' misunderstandings is not an end in itself, but a necessary first step in recovery from the confusion we are now enmeshed in.The picture of the relationship between words and thoughts that is part of the attempt to deal with language "scientifically" is partly responsible for dangerous cultural developments. The attempt by linguists to treat their subject scientifically makes them view meaning as an irritating complication to be ignored if possible. It turns them into formalists who try to understand language by studying its physical representations, with a resort to semantics only when unavoidable. With words practically stripped of their role as bearers of meaning, it becomes easy to see them as unimportant. Halpern's book is a serious critique of such oversimplified theorizing.
