The Social Art: Language and Its Uses

By Ronald Macaulay

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195106571
• ISBN13: 9780195106572
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.2" x 0.7" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Good information. Most useful text in my Anthro 104 class

I loved this book because it was easier to read than my other two Anthropology 104 textbooks, Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation and The workings of language.The best feature of this book is the glossary, which gives you meanings to some of the most used terms in the book. It has 33 chapters and it reads quickly like an elementary school english textbook.

highly approachable above all else

This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in language or linguistics at any level of discipline. Macaulay's style is informative and approachable--how refreshing it is to read a book on the topic of language that utilizes an easily approachable one! The chapters are quite short but make their points and present their theories clearly and succinctly, never drudging out boring pedantry just to fill pages. His is a very down-to-earth style and approach to this often lofty topic.