Customer Reviews

The Linguistics of Lying And Other Essays (Literary Conjugations)

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This is a very fine collection of five short essays dealing with how the context of language determines understanding and shapes human knowledge. Weinrich is a philologist, linguist,and commentator on human behavior of great insight, learning, and rhetorical skill. The title is clever but the first essay ("The Linguistics of Lying") should be read as only an introduction to the pleasure of reading the other four essays, each of which provides concise insights into language, communication, and human understanding. I hope this translation is but the first of many works by Weinrich that will become available in English.

The title of the book is more properly translated as "Linguistics of the Lie", but this is a quibble.

I read this book in its original German form about 13 years ago and found it immensely helpful and insightful. Now that it has been translated into English (by Jane K. Brown) it has become accessible to the English-speaking world. Weinrich's book is too valuable to have been neglected so long.

The translation is very good: clear and straightforward. Weinrich's distinction between Bedeutung and Meinung is translated as 'lexical meaning' and 'textual meaning', respectively, by Jane K. Brown, and I'm not sure I agree with these choices, but in any event having the translation is overall of great importance.

Highly recommended!