Miracle of Language

The insults to your intelligence begin right in the introduction, where you'll find a stupidly self-aggrandizing, obviously fictional anecdote about a policeman rewarding him for criticizing the officer's grammar during a traffic stop ("Are you the guy who writes those books about language?").

Then there's the pitifully shallow chapter on biased language, that can't decide how seriously to treat its subject;

Then there's the chapter on redundancy, where the author hilariously twists himself into linguistic pretzels to avoid overusing the word "redundancy";

Then there's the WTF chapter where he rhapsodizes on how unique and inimitable Emily Dickinson is, then prints some poems by his middle school English pupils, claiming that they've show more captured her spirit exactly. (!!)

He seems to be trying to Frankenstein together the remaining miscellany of his notebooks into an abomination that's part trivia and part lazy analysis; yet he also wants to be admired as a scholar and an authority. Predictably, he fails at everything, and cheapens every subject he touches.

This book will punish you, not reward you, for reading it. show less

Fifteen years ago, I attended a library conference where Richard Lederer was the keynote speaker. His message was intriguing and I bought several of his books but it has taken me this long to read the first one. The miracle of language is really a misnomer and the title should really be “The miracle of English.” Although the first two chapters do deal with language in general, Lederer’s main concern is English and the writers of English over the years who have shaped English into an international language. He points out that English has a greater vocabulary than any other language, with words from the Angles, the French and Latin. And the language does not hesitate to take in words from other languages and, if there isn’t a show more word, to make one up. Later in the book, he discusses seven of the most influential authors in the English language, praises books and libraries, and ends with a section of quotes from various authors about words. His makes a case for using simple words instead of convoluted language and quotes a section from Ecclesiastes and a version written by George Orwell which is 1 ½ times as long, showing how sterile modern English can be. Then there is the section about how words can change history and the example is chilling.

Lederer, a teacher of high school English and a columnist for a local newspaper, writes in an informal style. I felt that he tried to cover too much in this book since chapters seemed to move from gender problems in English to makers of new words to how to write poetry with examples from several of his high school students. Although he credited authors, he did not cite where the material was originally from. There is an index but it is not complete. The authors that he quoted in the chapter “Words about words” do not appear at all. As an academic librarian and having an interest in language, I expected more from this book. show less

I was expecting something more Steven Pinker-esque from this book—I hear Lederer is a neat speaker and enjoys to talk about language, so I expected the book to be more engaging and exploratory. Instead, it read like a disconnected series of newspaper columns (and I say that because I know he wrote a column in a newspaper—otherwise, it's a series of very short chapters). Sorry, Mr. Lederer, but this book didn't make me—a linguist!—feel like these examples of language were terribly miraculous.

Such potential.

I would use this book to show connections between the English and Spanish languages, and draw connections to how they were formed and how they are related.