Ronald K. S. Macaulay

This engagingly written, highly readable volume introduces lay readers to the fascinating world of language. Replete with jokes, anecdotes, quotations, and readily intelligible examples, it offers a painless entree to the full range of linguistic knowledge. In thirty-one brief chapters, Macaulay delves into such topics as language acquisition, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, social dialects, sex differences, writing, style, register, conversation, narrative, swearing, rhetoric, second language learning, and linguistic change. The reader comes away with a new appreciation of the pleasure to be derived from the study of this complex and uniquely human phenomenon.

Language and Its Uses

The Social Art

Here the author provides a new way of examining sociolinguistic variation. Using a sample from 33 speakers of English in Glasgow, he offers a new methodological paradigm to an audience of sociolinguists and others concerned with discourse analysis.

Age, Gender, and Social Class Differences in Discourse

Talk that Counts

Donald Brenneis

The Matrix of Language introduces students and other readers to recent debates in the study of language and culture. The articles in this anthology, selected for their readability, present a range of methodological approaches and well-known case studies that illustrate the interconnection of language, culture, and social practice. The editors' introductory essays compare and contrast specific approaches in four broad areas: language and socialization, gender, the ethnography of speaking, and the role of language in social and political life. The book is a valuable introduction in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics courses and a resource for anyone exploring the relation of language to psychology, political theory, feminist studies, and literature and folklore.

Ronald K. S. Macaulay

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