Customer Reviews

An Introduction To Language, 6e

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

20 years ago, I was toying with the idea of taking the linguistics option as part of my English degree at Oxford University. My course tutor recommended I read Fromkin & Rodman to "see if the subject suited me". F & R hooked me completely: All the major areas are covered, simply presented and introduced by a cleverly chosen cartoon which helps to breaks the ice.

I must have recommended the book to more than 100 people since then and am ordering another copy now because a [former!] friend lost my (heavily thumbed and annotated) original. I now lecture on communications-related subjects and still find myself referring regularly to this seminal work. A must for any serious student of communications science; it draws you gently into a complicated subject and makes the process highly enjoyable.

Those other bad reviews are right on the mark. I have taught from this book a couple of times at the university level, and I found it a shameful piece of junk. There are many cartoons included in it,which make it appear user-friendly at first glance, but it is so poorly written, and it explains things so poorly, that even many of my brighter students had trouble understanding it. (One colleague of mine, who insists on using it, feels the need to hand out copious explanatory notes with each chapter.) The book is full of glaring errors -- not only in linguistic matters but even in general knowledge, such as in the meaning of certain common acronyms (just one example). Even though these errors are easily spotted and corrected, they remain in the book from one edition to the next. The section on Language and Gender (among others) is pitiful, consisting mainly of research from the 1970s on language phenomena that have probably not been common since the 19th century. (When is the last time you heard a prostitute called a "laundress" or a "needlewoman"? The book goes out of its way to explain how unjust such monikers are, even though they are dead. Besides, my grandfather could recount cases from the turn of the century of call girls claiming they had arrived at Mr. So-&So's apartment to "take the laundry.") Some portions of the book are so inaccurate and badly written that I suspected that they were written by textbook editors and not by linguists. My students found this book a torment to learn from, and I found it a torment to teach from. An instructor would be better off choosing Finegan's "Language: Its Structure and Use" or Yule's "The Study of Language". While these texts have their own problems, they are infinitely better than this one.

At the university I attend we have uses this book in an introduction course for linguistics. It is rather good for in introductionary purposes but it does not go in great depth with the subjects. Use it to figure out whether linguistics is something for you, but if you already are interested in linguistics this book will be to shallow.

If you're looking for a college-level textbook - look elsewhere! As the 1-star reviews make clear, this is not aimed at you, despite the upmarket cover...

On the other hand, if you're looking for a 'Linguistics for Dummies' book without the gaudy yellow-and-black cover to give you away, this book should do the trick nicely :) It's a pleasant stroll through the main areas of linguistics, livened up with cartoons - just enough to give you a taste of the subject without bogging you down in erudition. I don't know enough about linguistics to comment on the criticisms of some readers (though rejecting an entire field of study on the basis of one book seems a little...childish to me!), but any book that can turn a dry academic subject into an entertaining read gets my vote.

I was a little shocked to read some of the bad reviews other people gave this book. Although it's not my major, I took an introductory linguistics course using this book for a general education requirement. I have really enjoyed the book and the writing style, and find myself reading chapters for fun which weren't even assigned! Well done.

A college professor first introduced me to AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE (3rd edition) in 1984, and I am still a fan. In fact, it is one of my ten favorite books. For a holiday gift this year, I will be receiving the 6th edition, and I am already looking forward to the updates from the previous editions. This text is a fascinating trip into the intricacies of language acquisition and use. Although probably not for everyone, if you loved diagramming sentences in school, and you actually appreciate that your father insisted you take Latin, then this book is probably for you.

Priscilla Oppenheimer says it all. I couldn't wait to give my copy away. The phonetics chapter is such a disaster that I had to ask a friend to teach me phonetics! I hope that a publisher comes out with an alternative so the beginning linguistics students don't have to suffer anymore.

book was a little highlighted and some of the page edges were bent but what more should I expect from a 42 cent book? It is still in a usable condition.

This book is unimaginably boring and stupid. It is filled with cartoons and the text is redundant. What this text really amounts to is a class in common sense. I am a CS/Math major and had been led to believe that Linguistics was a real science, probably because Noam Chomsky teaches at MIT, but I discovered that it is actually a wretched humanity (U Chicago agrees) and that little could be gleaned from a text in such a muddled discipline such as this one. Don't make the mistake I made! Take Physics instead!