Says Who?
A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words
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- CHF 6.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
A kinder, funner usage guide to the ever-changing English language and a useful tool for both the grammar stickler and the more colloquial user of English, from linguist and veteran professor Anne Curzan
“I was bowled over, page after page, by the author’s fine ear for our language and her openhearted erudition. I learned a lot, and I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more.”—Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer’s English
Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living, breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes beyond “right” and “wrong” to empower us to make informed language choices. Never snooty or scoldy (yes, that’s a “real” word!), this book explains where the grammar rules we learned in school actually come from and reveals the forces that drive dictionary editors to label certain words as slang or unacceptable.
Linguist and veteran English professor Anne Curzan equips readers with the tools they need to adeptly manage (a split infinitive?! You betcha!) formal and informal writing and speaking. After all, we don’t want to be caught wearing our linguistic pajamas to a job interview any more than we want to show up for a backyard barbecue in a verbal tux, asking, “To whom shall I pass the ketchup?” Curzan helps us use our new knowledge about the developing nature of language and grammar rules to become caretakers of language rather than gatekeepers of it. Applying entertaining examples from literature, newspapers, television, and more, Curzan welcomes usage novices and encourages the language police to lower their pens, showing us how we can care about language precision, clarity, and inclusion all at the same time.
With lively humor and humanity, Says Who? is a pragmatic and accessible key that reveals how our choices about language usage can be a powerful force for equity and personal expression. For proud grammar sticklers and self-conscious writers alike, Curzan makes nerding out about language fun.
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In this spirited treatise, Curzan (Fixing English), an English professor at the University of Michigan, argues that readers should embrace the flexibility of language. "Debates about language are almost always about more than language," she writes, reflecting on how power and authority affect what's considered proper usage. Curzan explains that standardized English isn't inherently more correct than other forms (hisself, she explains, actually follows the grammatical pattern established by myself, yourself, and herself more closely than himself does), it's just the iteration chosen by "speakers with social, political, and economic power" to be the one against which others are judged. Readers should accept the evolving meaning of such contested phrases as "more unique," Curzan contends, positing that though the phrase dilutes the literal definition of unique, such shifts in meaning are common and unavoidable (the definition of decimate was initially "kill one in every ten"). Instead of striving to evaluate whether usage is "correct," Curzan encourages considering whether a "word is working effectively in context." For instance, she suggests that as literally becomes increasingly understood to also mean figuratively, readers should be careful to "avoid unnecessary ambiguity" in formal writing while recognizing that its conversational use as an intensifier usually does little to impede understanding. Chock-full of fascinating trivia and persuasively argued, this will give grammar sticklers pause.
