Showing titles in Linguistics

Thirteen chapters evoke the joy and discovery of reading a menu dotted with the sharp-eyed annotations of a linguist. Jurafsky points out the subtle meanings hidden in filler words like "rich" and "crispy," zeroes in on the metaphors and storytelling tropes we rely on in restaurant reviews, and charts a micro-universe of marketing language on the back of a bag of potato chips.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most intriguing novella. Austin Gilroy is a scientist and is by nature sceptical of anything to do with the occult. So when his colleague, Professor Wilson, introduces him to the mysterious and sinister hypnotist, Miss Penclosa, he is inclined to view her as a fraud. But when Gilroy's fiancée is hypnotised and Miss Penclosa makes her do the unthinkable, Gilroy is forced to change his views.

At its heart, De Profundis is a love letter and is better known as the De Profundis papers. Written in 1897, while Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading Gaol, De Profundis would become one of his best-known works. The papers include Wilde's account of living a lavish lifestyle and his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, both of which he credited for his eventual downfall and imprisonment. The second half of the papers is Wilde's account of prison life and his spiritual awakening.

English is the collective work of millions of people throughout the ages. It is democratic, ever-changing and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs through the heart of world finance, medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand million people...

Eve Best, Danny Sapani and Shaun Dooley star in this modern, riveting and magical production of The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. The Winter's Tale treads new dramatic ground embracing tragedy, poetry, folklore, magic realism, music, comedy and the infamous stage direction 'exit pursued by a bear'. One of Shakespeare's mesmerising later productions, it is often considered a 'problem play' as it starts with a tragedy and ends in a romance. 

The phrase 'this book will change your life' has become one of the clichés of the publishing world, but Martin Eden is certainly a novel that merits that observation. Set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, Jack London's semiautobiographical narrative tells of working class sailor Eden's struggle to elevate himself to a level of society wherein, he believes, reside the intellect and culture he craves. One of the reasons for this endeavour is Ruth Morse, with whom he has fallen in love.

Hailed as the father of the naturalist novel, French author and playwright Honoré de Balzac left a legacy of treasured literary works that include Père Goriot and Cousin Bette. The daughter of a wealthy but miserly man, Eugénie Grandet falls in love with her penniless cousin, Charles. The two plan to marry, but at the behest of her father, Charles must first go overseas to make his fortune. Returning years later, Charles calls off the engagement, leaving Eugénie heartbroken and vengeful.

An amusing, informative, controversial and utterly irreverent history of the world’s favourite word. F, U, C and K – four letters that can cause outrage, scandal, embarrassment or instant relief if you hit your thumb with a hammer. In this wide-ranging and frequently hilarious history of the...

Collins makes language learning fun, fast and flexible. Pick up the essentials of the Japanese language with this easy-to-use audio introduction. Covering everything from finding your way to talking about yourself, Collins 40-minute audio can help you learn short and simple phrases quickly by...

What do we talk about when we talk about Irish? When we talk about saving or supporting a language do we mean the musical combination of syllables, or something more profound? How do new words enter a language, and what is the relationship between that strange dialect called Hiberno-English and its parent language? "Craic Baby" picks up exactly where "Motherfoclóir" left off and explores the very new and very old parts of the Irish language from a personal perspective.

Swift's allegorical satire about religion and politics follows the lives of three brothers, Martin, Peter, and Jack, each of who represents a faction of the Christian faith - Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and the dissenting faiths, respectively. Each brother inherits a coat (representing religious practice) from their father (God) on the condition that they do not change it. But instead the three quarrelsome youths disobey their father and change their coats beyond recognition.

The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan), is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return, he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy, but all Germans, and he sets out for the battlefront of the war in East Africa.

Leaves of Grass is the written expression of Whitman's view of life and humanity in the form of poetry. The author masterfully connects each poem in some way, while infusing his prose with his own philosophy. This collection is unique for its time due to the emphasis the author puts on pleasures of the flesh, without resorting to symbolism to any great extent.

Reginald, published in 1904, was the first of Saki's collections of short stories. The eponymous Reginald is an effete, cynical young man-about-town whose character is a vehicle for Saki's delicious biting wit satirizing Edwardian high society.

In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers - those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma poses a pair of questions: What does proper English mean? And who gets to say what's right? Our ideas of correct or proper English have a history, and today's debates over the state of the language - whether about Ebonics in schools, the unique use of language in a South Park episode, or split infinitives in the Times - make sense only in historical context.

The Talisman revolves around the Third Crusader's camp in the Holy Land whereby there exists a truce between the Christians and the Muslims. The camp, which is led by King Richard I of England (the Lion-heart) who is grievously ill, is being torn apart by tensions between rival leaders.

A party of English people is aboard the Euphrosyne, bound for South America. Among them is Rachel Vinrace, a young girl, innocent and wholly ignorant of the world of politics and society, books, sex, love and marriage. She is a free spirit half-caught, momentarily and passionately, by Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer who she meets in Santa Marina. But their engagement is to end abruptly, and tragically. Virginia Woolf's first novel, published in 1915, is a haunting exploration of a young woman's mind. 

Aristotle's Poetics is best known for its definitions and analyses of tragedy and comedy, but it also applies to truth and beauty as they are manifested in the other arts. In our age, when the natural and social sciences have dominated the quest for truth, it is helpful to consider why Aristotle claimed poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history. Like so many other works by Aristotle, the Poetics has dominated the way we have thought about all forms of dramatic performance in Europe and America ever since.

George Horace Lorimer is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, where he was credited with promoting and discovering authors like Jack London. Lorimer compiled his life advice into the fictional letters from John "Old Gorgon" Graham to his son Pierrepont. John Graham is a Chicago-based pork and finance baron. In the letters Pierrepont receives advice for his different stages of life. Old Gorgon's advice is packed throughout the book, easy to understand, and still rings true today.

Language is a wild animal: rough, ambiguous, inconsistent in countless ways. But that just makes it all the more tempting to tame it. Many have tried, from sticklers for supposedly correct grammar to inventors of supposedly perfect languages; from software engineers working on machine translation to governments that see language management as politics by another means. But when you enter the lair of a wild beast, you can be lucky to escape with your wits. Join Lane Greene on a journey of discovery into the deep strangeness of language.