1st Edition
Everyday Linguistics An Introduction to the Study of Language
This innovative introduction to linguistics connects language structure to everyday use, culture, and context, making the technicalities of language structure accessible, vivid, and engaging.
The first text to take a socially realistic linguistics approach, this exciting new textbook situates discussions about the building blocks of language like phonetics, syntax, and pragmatics within a social justice framework that recognizes that all language is shaped by sociocultural forces and reveals and reinforces ideologies. Uniquely, this text also introduces ecolinguistics, a new field that examines the relationship between language and its environment, again demonstrating how widely held views about language can have real-world consequences. Key features include:
- "Linguistics in your world" sections to connect concepts discussed with specific social issues
- "L1 acquisition in focus" sections to relate key concepts to first language acquisition
- "Explorations" sections at the end of each chapter to encourage students to test their knowledge, discuss in groups, and apply what they have learned to their own experiences
- End-of-chapter summaries and key term lists to conclude the main lessons and highlights of each chapter
- Recommendations for further reading
Everyday Linguistics: An Introduction to the Study of Language is an ideal starting point for students that are new to the study of language, and those not majoring in language study.
Acknowledgments
1 INTRODUCTION
Diverse language experiences
Why study linguistics—and what is it anyway?
How we’ll study language
A socially realistic linguistics
Prescriptive and descriptive perspectives on language
Navigating your way through this book
2 A LANGUAGE IS A LANGUAGE, RIGHT?
Introduction
What is language?
Design features of human language
Do animals have language?
Other characteristics of human language
3 MORPHOLOGY: WORD HISTORIES AND STRUCTURE
Introduction
Lexical categories
Words and their histories
Words and their structure
Morphology in languages other than English
Hierarchical structure in words
L1 acquisition in focus: She comed, those mouses
4 PHONETICS: THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH
Introduction
International Phonetic Alphabet
Classifying language sounds
Consonants and vowels
Natural classes
Accents
Prosody
Phonetics in your world: What’s in a name?
Phonetics in your world: Local acts of identity
Sign language phonetics
Phonetics in other languages
L1 acquisition in focus: Acquiring language sounds and signs
5 PHONOLOGY: WHY DO WE SAY IT LIKE THAT?
Introduction
Systematic structuring of sounds
Articulatory processes: Changing sounds
Phonology in your world: ask vs aks revisited
Morphophonology
L1 acquisition in focus: Learning phonemes and more
6 SYNTAX: ORDERING WORDS, MAKING SENTENCES
Introduction
Syntax and grammar
Constituents of a sentence
Phrase structure rules
Recursion
Structural ambiguity
Structural relationships among sentences
Syntactic operations
Using syntax in writing
Universal Grammar
L1 acquisition in focus: Acquiring syntax
Syntax in your (natural) world: Do birds have syntax?
Syntax in other languages
A note about theory
7 SEMANTICS: RELATIONSHIPS AMONG WORDS
Introduction
Meaning and meanings
Semantic relations: Is salt the opposite of pepper?
Figurative language
Semantic fields
Semantic roles and sentence meaning
Corpus linguistics
8 LANGUAGE IN EVERYDAY INTERACTION
Introduction
Discourse
Conversation patterns and organization
Pragmatics
Politeness
9 LANGUAGE VARIATION AND SOCIETY
Introduction
Structured variation
Standards and standardization
Critical sociolinguistics
10 AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE
Introduction
Overview
History of AAL
Structure of AAL
Variation within AAL
AAL in the courtroom
Micro-aggressions
Language, race, and identity
AAL and education
11 GENDERS, IDENTITIES, AND LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE
Introduction
Early studies of language and gender
Multiple identities: Black Masculine Language
Gender as performance
12 MULTILINGUALISM
Introduction
What is multilingualism?
Language planning
Language contact
Superdiversity
Linguistic relativity
Learning to be multilingual
Multilingualism in education
13 LANGUAGE BIRTH AND DEATH
Introduction
Origins of language
Language spread and language families
A very brief history of English
Origins of American Sign Language
Language loss and endangerment
14 ECOLINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Introduction
Language and its natural environment
Eco-critical linguistics
Index
Biography
Joanne Cavallaro is a professor emerita of English at St. Catherine University, Minnesota, U.S.A., where she has taught linguistics for 30 years.
