From the Back Cover
A major introductory language/linguistics textbook written specifically for English and Education majors, How English Works is an engaging introduction to the structure of English, general theories in linguistics, and important issues in sociolinguistics.
This accessible text provides more extensive coverage of issues of particular interest to English and Education majors. Tapping into our natural curiosity about language, it invites all students to connect academic linguistics to everyday use of the English language and to become active participants in the construction of linguistic knowledge.
The second edition provides updated examples of current language change, including new slang, as well as new research findings on American dialects, language acquisition, language evolution, eggcorns, English and the Internet, and much more.
FEATURES
o Focuses on issues especially important to English and Education majors, such as American dialects, descriptive and prescriptive approaches to English grammar, the social and political issues surrounding the English language, English spelling, stylistics, language attitudes, and language education.
o Provides current examples that tie the linguistic material to students’ everyday experiences with the English language. Each chapter opens with a scenario that highlights key issues covered in the chapter.
o Includes engaging exercises that allow students to be active investigators of the English language, connect linguistic study to literary examples, and ask students to apply material to teaching situations.
o Features a building block approach, beginning with an introduction to the foundations of systematic language study and the relationship of language and authority and then progressing up through the levels of language structure, from phonology through syntax and semantics to discourse and sociolinguistics. In the second edition, each chapter even more clearly shows how these levels are interrelated.
o Provides a history of English throughout the text, which culminates in two final chapters focused on the past and future of English.
o Includes a wealth of useful pedagogical material, clarifying or detailing text topics and prompting student participation: Questions to Discuss, Scholar Profile, and Language Change and Language Variation at Work boxes; end-of-chapter exercises; suggested readings; and a glossary of linguistic terminology.
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About the Author
Anne Curzan is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and School of Education. In 2007, she received an Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship for outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. She is the author of Gender Shifts in the History of English (Cambridge UP, 2003) and co-author of First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student’s Guide to Teaching (U of Michigan P, 2006). She currently serves as co-editor of the Journal of English Linguistics.
Michael Adams teaches English language and literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. For fifteen years, he taught at Albright College, in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he also served as chair of the Department of English and associate academic dean; he has been a visiting professor at Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Iceland. He is the author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon (Oxford UP, 2003) and Slang: The People’s Poetry (Oxford UP, 2009), as well as contributing editor to Word Histories and Mysteries: Abracadabra to Zeus (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). He was editor of Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America for several years; currently, he is editor of the quarterly journal American Speech.
