Language - The Loaded Weapon: The Use and Abuse of Language Today

By Dwight Bolinger

Book Overview

Language - The Loaded Weapon offers a glimpse of what the recent study of language is beginning to tell us about these things. It explains in simple terms the essentials of linguistic form and meaning, and applies them to illuminate questions of correctness, truth, class and dialect, manipulation through advertising and propaganda, sexual and other discrimination, official obfuscation and the maintenance of power, and - most pervasive of all - language as the vital agent with which we build our worlds. Explaining language has been Dwight Bolinger's life work, and as his invigorating new book amply shows he believes that what is true and important can also be made clear and pleasurable

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0582291089
• ISBN13: 9780582291089
• Release Date: October 1980
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

powerful resource for examining social aspects of language

Best resource I've yet seen for an exposition of how our use of language helps to shape our reality. Provides first-rate analysis of linguistic conventions along with numerous examples to illustrate points.