John McWhorter
Author
Publisher
Portfolio/Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Acclaimed linguist and award-winning writer John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric. Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We're told read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is...
Author
Publisher
Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
"One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much"--
"Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say "f&*k!"...
Author
Publisher
Henry Holt and Co
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
"A bestselling linguist takes us on a lively tour of how the English language is evolving before our eyes and why we should embrace this transformation and not fight it. Language is always changing -- but we tend not to like it. We understand that new words must be created for new things, but the way English is spoken today rubs many of us the wrong way. Whether its the use of literally to mean "figuratively" rather than "by the letter" or the way...
Author
Publisher
Gotham Books
Language
English
Description
Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, author McWhorter distills hundreds of years of lore into one lively history. Covering the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during...
Author
Publisher
Books on Tape
Pub. Date
2021
Language
English
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.
Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told...
New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.
Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told...
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 12
Language
English
Description
Turn back the clock to a time when proper forms of speech seem ungrammatical now, and what were considered blatant errors sound perfectly correct today. Among the authors you examine are the American colonial poet Anne Bradstreet and Charles Dickens.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 7
Language
English
Description
Trace the events that explain why Old English lost much of its complexity in the transition to Middle English. The agents of change were not the Norman French, who arrived in 1066, but the already established Vikings, who's Old Norse fused with Old English to create an abbreviated new language.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 2
Language
English
Description
Trace the evidence that English derives from a language that was incompletely learned by invaders of northern Europe more than 2,000 years ago. Where were these people from? An analysis of sound changes in their language, Proto-Germanic, leads to an intriguing hypothesis.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 10
Language
English
Description
Begin a new section of the course that focuses on your own relationship with language. In this lecture, trace the origin of "correct" usage to Robert Lowth, an 18th-century bishop who wrote an influential textbook on grammar that is the leading source of prescriptivist rules still promoted today.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 9
Language
English
Description
Having seen that Proto-Germanic was streamlined into Old English, which was streamlined into Modern English, discover that Black English takes this process a step further. What some regard as bad grammar is language evolution, analogous to the shift from biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Is English broken? Do bad grammar, slang, and illogical constructions signal a decline in standards of usage? Do e-mail and text messages corrupt the art of writing? In short, is our language going to the dogs?
Far from being a language in decline, English is the product of surprisingly varied linguistic forces, some of which have only recently come to light. And these forces continue to push English in new directions.
Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths...
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 1
Language
English
Description
Is English going to the dogs? Embark on an exploration of myths and controversies about our native tongue - where it came from, where it's going, and its unusual place among the world's 6,000 languages. Begin your investigation by looking at the purported epidemic of English abuse.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 23
Language
English
Description
Do the shortcuts and informality of e-mail and text messages represent bad writing? Probe this controversy in light of the unique niche filled by these new forms of expression. Until the advent of e-mail and texting, there was no truly conversational form of writing analogous to conversational speech.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
Starting with Celtic contributions to English vocabulary, explore the borrowings from Old Norse, French, and Latin. These have enriched English with a wealth of synonyms, allowing speakers to choose between alternatives such as the Anglo-Saxon hide versus the Latinate conceal.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 4
Language
English
Description
English has a more interesting history after the Anglo-Saxon period than was previously thought. See how the evidence is in grammatical constructions you use every day. For example, the reason you say "I'm building a house" rather than "I build house" traces to Celtic influences.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 20
Language
English
Description
Public speaking in English is currently trending toward a more informal style. Contrast speeches given in the old oratorical style with the more colloquial approach that took hold in the 1960s. Paradoxically, this loss of rhetorical polish has not meant a loss of eloquence.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 11
Language
English
Description
In a sentence such as "Tell each student to hand in their paper," no ambiguity arises, but prescriptivists insist that the singular form of the pronoun be used: his, her, or his or her. Ponder that pronouns' behavior is unpredictable and ever-changing in all languages.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works-and much of it is downright fun to learn about. But with so many potential avenues of exploration, it can often seem daunting to try to understand it. Where does one even start? In these twenty-four 15-minute lectures by one of the best-known popularizes of language,...
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
See how writing styles have changed by comparing typical school reading assignments in the United States from the beginning and end of the 20th century. Then search out the reasons for this marked shift. One clue is that Americans in the past often spoke of a fine style as "good English."