Exploring Language

Chapter 1: Breaking Silences



BEGINNINGS: THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE



Visual: Tower of Babel



From Hand to Mouth

Michael C. Corballis



Language and Thought

Susanne K. Langer



Horton Heared A Who!

Steven Pinker



Visual: Gimme a Cookie (cartoon)



Chunking

Ben Zimmer



Another Language for the Deaf

Margalit Fox



Visual: Signwriting



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS: COMING INTO LANGUAGE



Homemade Education

Malcolm X



A Word for Everything

Helen Keller



Visual: Sign Language



Spanish Lessons

Christine Marin



Chapter 2: Writers on Writing



THE WRITING PROCESS



Writing for an Audience

Linda Flower



Getting Started

Anne Lamott



Beware the Trap of 'Bore-geous' Writing

Ayelet Waldman



Writing to Change the World

Mary Pipher



FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS



The Case for Short Words

Richard Lederer



Saying Is Believing

Patricia T. O'Conner



Cliche's Anyone?

James Isaacs



Visual: Writing Well (cartoon)



Selection, Slanting and Charged Language

Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B. Birk



Chapter 3: A World of Language



WHAT IS "AMERICAN" ENGLISH?



Do You Speak American?

Robert MacNeil



Everyone Has an Accent but Me

John Esling



Good English and Bad

Bill Bryson



Why Good English Is Good For You

John Simon



Why the U.S. Needs an Official Language

Mauro E. Mujica



ENGLISH AS A GLOBAL LANGUAGE



Why a Global Language?

David Crystal



Visual: English and Globish (cartoon)



What Global Language?

Barbara Wallraff



English as a Global Language: A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

David Redfern



Lost in America

Douglas McGray



Chapter 4: Technology and Language



MAKING CONNECTIONS IN A MODERN WORLD



In the Beginning Was the Word

Christine Rosen



Is PowerPoint the Devil?

Julia Keller



Visual: The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation and The Making of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation

Peter Norvig



Blogging in the Global Lunchroom

Geoffrey Nunberg



VIRTUALLY SPEAKING

Texting

David Crystal



Visual: If You Can't Beat `Em . . . (cartoon)



r u online?: The evolving lexicon of wired teens

Kris Axtman



The Keypad Solution

Ammon Shea



The Other Side of E-Mail

Robert Kuttner



Three Tweets for the Web

Tyler Cowen



I Tweet, Therefore I Am

Peggy Orenstein



Chapter 5: Communication Gap



HE SAYS, SHE SAYS



Women Talk Too Much

Janet Holmes



Sex Differences

Ronald Macaulay



What Language Barrier?

Deborah Cameron



No Detail Is Too Small for Girls Answering a Simple Question

Tony Kornheiser



Visual: Men Are from Belgium, Women Are from New Brunswick (cartoon)



Oh, Mom. Oh, Honey

Deborah Tannen



Speaking Personally

John G,Guinan



WHAT WE SAY AND HOW WE SAY IT



Nonverbal Behavior: Culture, Gender, and the Media

Teri Kwal Gamble and Michael W. Gamble



Small-Scale Communication

Jennifer Akin



The Like Virus

David Grambs



Some Friends and I Started Talking: Conversation and Social Change

Margaret J. Wheatley



Chapter 6: Censorship and Free Speech



BIASED LANGUAGE AND HATE SPEECH



Hate Speech

Robin Tolmach Lakoff



Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines

Rosalie Maggio



The Word Police

Michiko Kakutani



"Nigger": The Meaning of a Word

Gloria Naylor



CENSORSHIP AND FREE SPEECH



Regulating Racist Speech on Campus

Charles R. Lawrence, III



There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing Too

Stanley Fish



Freedom of Deplorable Speech

Tina Dupuy



Visual: First Amendment (cartoon)



Hate Speech Cannot be Tolerated

Richard Delgado

Chapter 7: Advertising and Print Media

THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING



With These Words I Can Sell You Anything

William Lutz



The Language of Advertising

Charles A. O'Neill



Be All That You Can Be: The Company Persona and Language Alignment

Frank Luntz



A Brand by Any Other Name

Douglas Rushkoff



Visual: Current Advertisements



THE FUTURE OF PRINT MEDIA



Out of Print

Eric Alterman



Is Print Dead?

J.A. Konrath



Are We Reaching Da Youth?

Danny Schechter



Will the Death of Newspapers Also Kill Our Freedoms?

Frank Watson



Freedom of Speech and the Editorial Cartoon

Doug Marlette



Visual: Editorial Cartoons



Chapter 8: Political Wordplay



POLITICALLY SPEAKING



How to Detect Propaganda

Institute for Propaganda Analysis



Doubts About Doublespeak

William Lutz



Do You Speak Presidential?

Anna Marie Trester



Deconstructing Obama

Richard O'Mara



Fighting Words: The War over Language

Jon Hooten



Visuals: Campaign Advertisements



SPEAKING OUT: LANGUAGE THAT INSPIRED CHANGE



Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King



Inaugural Address

John F. Kennedy



Kennedy's Inaugural Address: Ask Not What Happened to Oratory

Alexandra Petri



Aren't I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth



A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama



Visual: Obama Speech



Chapter 9: Language and the Brain



LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT



Does Language Shape How You Think?

Guy Deutscher



You Say Up, I Say Yesterday

Joan O'C. Hamilton



How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?

Lera Boroditsky



What's in a Word?

Sharon Begley



DIGITAL THOUGHT



Google Making Us Stoopid?

Nicolas Carr



The Internet and How We Think: Writers Offer Their Opinions

John Naughton



Your iBrain: How Technology Changes the Way We Think

Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan



Speaking in Tones: Music and Language Partner in the Brain

Diana Deutsch



Mind over Mass Media

Steven Pinker