"Scripps National Spelling Bee champion Zaila Avant-garde teaches young readers about the joy of learning new words in this Step 1 leveled reader"--

Presents a study of the relationship between language and human nature, explaining how everything from swearing and innuendo to prepositions and baby names reveals facts about key human concepts, emotions, and relationships.

A new blueprint for fast language learning. Lewis argues that you don't need a great memory or "the language gene" to learn a language quickly, and debunks a number of long-held beliefs, such as adults not being as good of language learners as children. --

Idealistic Fox 8's ability to communicate in "Yuman" cannot save his pack when their den and food supply are destroyed to build a mall, so he writes a letter asking for an explanation of human's cruelty.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates...

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--Metaphors that can shape...

Overview: Most scholarly speculation on the origin of human language has centered around speech. However, the growing understanding of sign languages on human development has transformed the debate on language evolution. David F. Armstrong's new book Show of Hands: A Natural History of Sign Language casts a wide net in history and geography to explain how these visible languages have enriched human culture in general and how their study has expanded...

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how--and whether--culture shapes language and language, culture. How languages deal with color is given particular emphasis.

It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more filled with wildly implausible conspiracy theories. Dogwhistles and Figleaves explores certain ways in which such changes - both of which defied previously settled norms of political speech - have been brought about. Jennifer Saul shows that two linguistic devices, dogwhistles and figleaves, have played a crucial role. Some dogwhistles (such as "88,"...

Discover words to surprise, delight, and enamor. Learn terms for the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, for dancing awkwardly but with relish, and for the look shared by two people who each wish the other would speak first. Mak loves words, and her brief compilation of words will surprise, delight, and enamor. Do you practice Tsundoku? It is a Japanese noun for the letting books pile up unread after your buy them. Or perhaps you Balter....