Exploring Language

"Perhaps the single most difficult problem facing English teachers today is making students sensitive to language. The rules of grammar, like the rules of spelling and punctuation, can be mastered through drills. But the ability to write well, to use words skillfully and confidently, requires greater understanding: knowledge of how language works, how it reconstructs the real world for us, how it can be used to lead, mislead, and manipulate us. I designed this anthology on the belief that writing with skill and confidence can be taught once students understand and appreciate the subtle complexities and richness of the English language. And so the book contains essays that analyze how language works -- a body of knowledge assembled from various books and journals to which students may not have been exposed. The thirty-nine essays here are organized around nine major concepts covering a wide range of topics that will appeal to students and teachers of composition. The selections fill four criteria: 1) they demonstrate some aspect of the way English is used and abused; 2) they will interest a general audience; 3) they focus more on the application of language than on theory; 4) they invite students into current debates over cultural and social issues. Any discussion of language becomes a discussion of humanity. Therefore, this collection exposes students to a generous number of human issues -- politics, the media, advertising, sexism, racism, obscenity, education, the future, and many more." -- From the preface.