Why
I Read This Book
A couple
of my colleagues have recommended David Crystal to me as someone who writes very
interesting and engaging books about linguistics. (These have all been British colleagues, so
perhaps David Crystal is better known inside the U.K.?)
At
the moment, this is the only David Crystal book I’ve been able to find out
here. (The selection of English books is
always limited here in Asia).
This
is probably not the book my colleagues had in mind when they recommended David
Crystal to me. It’s a book written for
children—part of a series of “Little” books published by Yale University Press [SEE HERE]
that introduce various academic subjects to a young audience.
As
I’m no longer a child, this book is much below my current reading level. But then, I’ve never believed in being a snob
about these things. “Eh, at least it won’t
do me any harm to read it,” I thought to myself. “It will at least give me a rough idea of David
Crystal’s views on language. And, you
never know, I might just pick up a thing or two.”
The
Review
So, as
this is a book for children, you won’t expect to get much beyond a basic
introduction to the subject.
And
yet, it would be untrue to say I learned nothing from the book. There were a few odd facts that David Crystal
throws in about language that I was not aware of. And sometimes even in cases when I knew the
basic idea, David Crystal illustrates it with new examples I was unaware
of. Or presents a slightly different way
of looking at something.
Mostly
for me it was a review of concepts covered in (among other places) An Introduction to Language,
but David Crystal writes in such an easy and readable style, that I didn’t
really mind. I was happy just to flip
through the pages. And even if I didn’t
get a lot out of the book, I still can’t complain because I had to put very
little effort into it.
At
some point I’m going to have to try to track down an adult book by David
Crystal, but this book still gave me a taste for some of his areas of interest
(for example, he appears to be quite interested in how the Internet is
developing its own dialect in the form of text-speak).
Notes
* Despite the fact that this book is marketed as a book for children,
I wonder a bit about who’s actually reading it.
Would you have, of your own free will, sat down and read an introduction
to linguistics when you were ten years old?
I doubt it would have attracted my attention when I was a child.
Although
I doubt data is being kept on this, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the actual readers of this book were adults
like myself—adults who wanted to find out more about linguistics, but are
intimidated by the more rigorous academic books.
I
also suspect that when the publishers print these books, they know this full
well.
* David Crystal is apparently a big Terry Pratchett fan. (Terry
Pratchett’s stories get referenced several times as examples in this
book.) Another one of David Crystal’s favorite
examples is Charles Dickens.
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