A01=Mark Halpern
Academic Linguists
Air Force
Alaska Native Language Center
Author_Mark Halpern
British National Corpus
Category=CF
Category=DS
Category=JBCC
Chomskyan Revolution
descriptive linguistics
Double Entry
Double Entry Bookkeeping
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
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
linguistic formalism
Modern English Usage
North Slope Borough
prescriptivist descriptivist debate
Public Information Officer
Racial Observer
rhetoric revival
Ruth Berlau
Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
scientific critique of linguistics
semantic change
Sprague De Camp
Turing Test
Turing's Imitation Game
Turing’s Imitation Game
Younger Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781412808255
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Aug 2008
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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.
Mark Halpern is a freelance editor and writer. He holds degrees in English Language and Literature from the City College of New York and Columbia University. His writings have appeared in The Vocabula Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and The New Atlantis. He is the author of Binding Time, a book about computer programming.
