SpecGram Essential Guide to Linguistics - A Book Review

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I recently had the excruciating pleasure of reading an advance copy of The Speculative Grammarian's Essential Guide to Linguistics. For the rare few who are unfamiliar with Speculative Grammarian, it is, and I quote, "the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics." 

While I don't know that I would call the book "essential", I will tell you that it is essentially absurd and all-encompassing. At a brief 360 pages, it conquers such important topics as cartoon theories of linguistics, linguistic love poetry and mytholingual creatures, not to mention the standard fare of syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology and morphology. There are many impressive diagrams and illustrations that really shed light on the more difficult topics (they also add to the aesthetically pleasing nature of the book). I do believe that his book is an overwhelming indulgence that should not be avoided.

Songs of Love & Grammar (& %*# - :@; etc.)*

From James Harbeck's book Songs of Love & Grammar:

Dim innuendos

A sweet musician in a bar said, "Boy, I think you're #."
I said, "Girl, you're a ♮, but I don't want to harp."
She said, "Well, here's the key so you can get into my ♭."
The rest of it I can't repeat, so I'll conclude at that.
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Sharp, natural, flat. I didn't think it would be wise to try to include a repeat typographically - it doesn't really work without the rest of the bar lines.
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Harbeck's book is filled with over 100 pages of delightful poetry that turn grammar and punctuation lessons into fun, little love ditties.

My only complaint is that the title is a bit misleading; there seem to be almost as many songs about symbols (see Dim innuendos above), signs, and abbreviations as there are about grammar, so I added to the title of this post * & symbols, signs, and abbreviations.

Either way, it is a highly entertaining book and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys having fun with language.

You can read more excerpts from the book at Harbeck's blog Sesquiotica, (which, by the way, happens to be one of my favorite blogs).

Also, make sure to check out Harbeck's Word Tasting Notes. These notes cover the visual aspect of words, how words feel in the mouth, the semantics and etymologies of words, and more. 

Book Review - You're My Dawg, Dog: a Lexicon of Dog Terms for People

by Donald Friedman with illustrations by J.C. Suarès 

I would say I was as happy as a clam while reading You're My Dawg, Dog, but a dog with two tails fits the bill better. As a person who loves playing with words almost as much as I love playing with my dog, I had a feeling I would enjoy this book when I opened it to this wonderful  introductory paraprosdokian and its adorable accompanying illustration:

Outside of a dog,

a book is man's best friend.

Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

- Groucho Marx

The book continued to entertain throughout with over 140 canine-based terms, metaphors, idioms and proverbs, and numerous charming illustrations. Having written my master's essay in a large part about animal metaphors, I was surprised that the book even included several terms and expressions that were new to me. Here are a few that I enjoyed:

Doggo (adv) To be still and quiet (lying like a dog) in concealment. "Herb and Sally, nearly caught in flagrante delicto, lay doggo in the thick foliage until the other guests had passed by."

Dog shelf (n) The floor in sarcastic usage. "Hang it on the dog shelf, Herb!' Sally yelled to him indicating that he should throw his coat on the floor, as was his habit."

Why keep a dog and bark yourself? Don't arrange for a task to be accomplished by another and then do it yourself - that's the message of this ancient proverb, found in a 1583 treatise.

In addition to definitions, the book also includes numerous etymologies and several amusing quotes from famous individuals.

Overall, I would call You're My Dawg, Dog a delightful romp in a doggy word park. And Stanley agrees too. Here he is reading his already dog-eared copy.

Illustrations © 2013 J.C. Suarès. www.welcomebooks.com/dawg

Perfect Timing

Having been away from the internet much of the summer, I found it a wonderful coincidence that, upon checking in with some of my favorite blogs, Stan Carey's recent Link Love post on Sentence first included a link to an interview with David Crystal. The timing of my internet access and his posting were perfect as I just finished reading David Crystal's Just a Phrase I'm Going Through: My Life in Language.

Crystal is a fascinating speaker and writer who succeeds in making linguistics accessible to all (not to mention the fact that he doesn't disappoint in the humor area while still being very informative).


Neal Whitman's post David Crystal's Just a Phrase I'm Going Through on his blog Literal-minded does such a good job of summarizing the book and providing examples of anecdotes found in the book that I will just sign off now. 


I am heading back to internet no man's land. Until I return again, please check out all of the above links.

Book Review Briefs: Understanding Language Through Humor

"Understanding Language Through Humor" by Stanley Dubinsky and Chris Holcomb
ʌ ʌ (2 carets up)

This is the perfect book for anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of language while being entertained at the same time. I would recommend it for high school age readers and up. The book is capable of being purely a pleasure read (an educational pleasure as an added bonus) as well as a study companion for students in language-themed courses. I will certainly use this book as a resource the next time I teach an introductory linguistics class.

Here is a summary from Cambridge University Press:

Students often struggle to understand linguistic concepts through examples of language data provided in class or in texts. Presented with ambiguous information, students frequently respond that they don't 'get it'. The solution is to find an example of humour that relies on the targeted ambiguity. Once they laugh at the joke, they have tacitly understood the concept, and then it is only a matter of explaining why they found it funny. Utilizing cartoons and jokes illustrating linguistic concepts, this book makes it easy to understand these concepts, while keeping the reader's attention and interest. Organized like a course textbook in linguistics, it covers all the major topics in a typical linguistics survey course, including communication systems, phonetics and phonology, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, language use, discourses, child language acquisition and language variation, while avoiding technical terminology.

Here is a joke from the book that is used to illustrate deictic confusion:

A guy phones the local hospital and yells, "You've gotta help! My wife is in labor!" The nurse says, "Calm down. Is this her first child?" He replies, "No! This is her husband!"

And here is the table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Talking to Garfield: human and animal communication
3. Did I hear that right? The sounds of language
4. Twisted words: word structure and meaning
5. Fitting words together: phrase structure and meaning
6. Meaning one thing and saying another: indirect speech and conversational principles
7. Fitting the pieces together: the structure of discourse
8. 'Kids say the darndest things': children acquiring language
9. Variety is the spice of life: language variation
10. Cross-cultural gaffes: language and culture
11. The language police: prescriptivism and standardization
12. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Don't let the portion of the book description that says it avoids "technical terminology" lead you to believe the book is simplistic; it is not. I think it would have been more accurate to say "overly technical terminology". The book is smart and accessible at the same time.

Book Review Briefs: Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody's Famous Language School

"Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody's Famous Language School" by Edwin L. Battistella
ʌv (1 caret up, 1 caret down)

A book for individuals who are curious about English language education and marketing, and how these two topics overlapped in the early 1900s.

As I have always been fascinated by the advertising industry and pretty much anything having to do with language, I was very excited to read this book. After reading it, I am sorry to report that it was a bit of a letdown.

There were many interesting facts about Cody's life and his approach to teaching, and it was fun to see some of the exercises from his course. Overall, however, I found the writing to be quite dry and repetitive in places. The book was not so much an entertaining look at history as a recitation of historical information.

Here is a description of the book from Oxford University Press:

In the early 1900s, the language of America was becoming colloquial English-the language of the businessman, manager, and professional. Since college and high school education were far from universal, many people turned to correspondence education-that era's distance learning-to learn the art of speaking and writing. By the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of Americans were sending coupons from newspapers and magazines to order Sherwin Cody's 100% Self-correcting Course in the English Language, a patented mail-order course in English that was taken by over 150,000 people.

Cody's ubiquitous signature advertisement, which ran for over forty years, promised a scientifically-tested invention that improved speaking and writing in just 15 minutes a day. Cody's ad explained that people are judged by their English, and he offered self-improvement and self-confidence through the mail.

In this book, linguist Edwin Battistella tells the story of Sherwin Cody and his famous English course, situating both the man and the course in early twentieth century cultural history. The author shows how Cody became a businessman-a writer, grammatical entrepreneur, and mass-marketer whose ads proclaimed "Good Money in Good English" and asked "Is Good English Worth 25 Cents to You?" His course, perhaps the most widely-advertised English education program in history, provides a unique window onto popular views of language and culture and their connection to American notions of success and failure. But Battistella shows Sherwin Cody was also part of a larger shift in attitudes. Using Cody's course as a reference point, he also looks at the self-improvement ethic reflected in such courses and products as the Harvard Classics, The Book of Etiquette, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the U.S. School of Music, and the Charles Atlas and Dale Carnegie courses to illustrate how culture became popular and how self-reliance evolved into self-improvement.

Don't shy away from reading the book if the description piques your interest; just be prepared for its lusterless nature.

Book Review Briefs: The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

"The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman" by Meg Wolitzer

ʌ ʌ (2 carets up)

What a wonderful book for young readers. Whether interested in language or not, this is an enjoyable book and I'll bet anyone who reads it will discover a new found enthusiasm for vocabulary, parts of speech, and morphology.

If the cover image didn't give it away, the book is about the game of Scrabble, more specifically, a Youth Scrabble Tournament and what brings three preteens from different states to the tournament.

Here is a summary from Penguin.com:

At first glance, Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano don't seem to have much in common. Duncan is trying to look after his single mom and adjust to life in a new town while managing his newfound Scrabble superpower—he can feel words and pictures beneath his fingers and tell what they are without looking. April is pining for a mystery boy she met years ago and striving to be seen as more than a nerd in her family of jocks. And homeschooled Nate is struggling to meet his father's high expectations for success.

When these three unique kids are brought together at the national Youth Scrabble Tournament, each with a very different drive to win, their paths cross and stories intertwine . . . and the journey is made extraordinary with a perfect touch of magic. Readers will fly through the pages, anxious to discover who will take home the grand prize, but there's much more at stake than winning and losing.

Anagrams are a frequent topic in the book, as evidenced by these excerpts:

"Words are like clay, Dorfman," he went on. "They can be shaped and messed with not only by your hands, but also by your head."

"PROSE is an anagram of ROPES. Oh, and SPORE is too. And POSER."

Here is an excerpt that includes the topics of vocabulary, parts of speech and morphology:

Duncan thought about the word AA, for instance, which he had looked up in the Scrabble dictionary and found out that it meant "rough, cindery lava." If he hadn't known it was a noun, he might have tried to add ING onto the end of it, thinking it was a verb.

Makes me wish I was a kid again so I could read books and play Scrabble all day long.

Hot Coffee and Book Reviews with George Lakoff

Last week I saw the movie “Hot Coffee” and was pleasantly surprised that George Lakoff made a couple of appearances. It was a very entertaining, informative and thought-provoking documentary with plenty of discussion about the role language plays in the legal system and in political advertising campaigns. It rates ʌ ʌ in my book (2 carets up).

Here is a summary from IMDb:

Most people think they know the "McDonald's coffee case," but what they don't know is that corporations have spent millions distorting the case to promote tort reform. HOT COFFEE reveals how big business, aided by the media, brewed a dangerous concoction of manipulation and lies to protect corporate interests. By following four people whose lives were devastated by the attacks on our courts, the film challenges the assumptions Americans hold about "jackpot justice."

For those unfamiliar with George Lakoff, he is a well-known Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught there since 1972 and previously taught at Harvard (1965-69) and the University of Michigan (1969-1972). In linguistics, he is most associated with his work on metaphor and human thinking.

Two of Lakoff's academic books that I have read and highly recommend (2 carets up each) are: "Metaphors We Live By" written with Mark Johnson and "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things".

Here are the summaries from George Lakoff's website:

METAPHORS WE LIVE BY (1984)
People use metaphors every time they speak. Some of those metaphors are literary – devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. But most are much more basic than that – they’re “metaphors we live by”, metaphors we use without even realizing we’re using them. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind.

WOMEN, FIRE, AND DANGEROUS THINGS (1990)
Focusing on studies of how humans categorize objects and ideas, this classic cognitive science book examines the new understanding of human thought which proposes that human reason is imaginative, metaphorical, and intrinsically linked with the human body.

Summer Reading - 75 Important Female Authors

In response to Esquire's "The 75 Books Every Man Should Read", which included only one book by a female author, Logophilius has just published a list of 75 female authors "whose works are just as great and just as important as any named on Esquire's list."

It is a wonderful list and I encourage everyone to check it out.

75 More Great Authors Who Could Have Made Esquire's List

Teaching in the Basement of Old Main

I just finished reading "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic." Because I teach as an adjunct, I thought it would be interesting to read about Professor X's experiences as an adjunct instructor of English composition and literature.

Some chapters were interesting; however, most of the interesting parts involved general statistics, information and data about college admission policies, tuition rates, class placement procedures and the like (none of which has to do with Professor X's adjunct experiences).

Some chapters I simply skimmed. There were too many details about Professor X's class readings and assignments. I had these classes freshman year and was not reading the book as a refresher.

When Professor X did share experiences that were specific to adjuncting, I felt like I could have been in his shoes, in those classrooms. Too bad there weren't more of these experiences in the book.


From http://xkcd.com/