Introduction
Critical Thinking
1. Breaking Silences
Beginnings: Evolution of Language
Visual: Tower of Babel
From Hand to Mouth (Michael C. Corballis)
Language and Thought (Susanne K. Langer)
Horton Heared a Who! (Steven Pinker)
Another Language for the Deaf (Margalit Fox)
Visual: SignWriting
Speaking in Tongues (James Geary)
How Do You Learn a Dead Language? (Cynthia Cyr)
Personal Recollections: Coming into Language
Homemade Education (Malcolm X)
A Word for Everything (Helen Keller)
Visual: American Sign Language
My Yiddish (Leonard Michaels)
Spanish Lessons (Christine Marin)
Language of Silence (Maxine Hong Kingston)
Visual: A Child’s First Story
2. Writers on Writing
The Writing Process
Writing for an Audience (Linda Flower)
Getting Started (Anne Lamott)
Computers Invite a Tangled Web of Complications (P.J. O’Rourke)
Writing to Change the World (Mary Piper)
Visual: The Secret Lives of Fonts
On Good Writing (John Leo)
Finding the Right Words
The Case for Short Words (Richard Lederer)
Saying is Believing (Patricia T. O’Connor)
Cliché’s Anyone (James Isaacs)
Selection, Slanting and Charged Language (Newman P. Birk & Genevieve B. Birk)
3. A World of Language
What Is “American” English?
Do You Speak American (Robert MacNeil)
Everyone Has an Accent but Me (John Esling)
Good English and Bad (Bill Bryson)
Why the U.S. Needs an Official Language (Mauro E. Mujica)
And May He Be Bilingual (Julia Ortiz Cofer)
English as a Global Language
Why a Global Language? (David Crystal)
What Global Language? (Barbara Walraff)
Not the Queen’s English (Carla Power)
Lost in America (Douglas McGray)
4. Technology and Language
Making Connections in a Modern World
Is PowerPoint the Devil? (Julia Keller)
Visual: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint, (Peter Norvig)
The Making of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (Peter Norvig)
Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissim (Christine Rosen)
Virtually Trustworthy (Judith Donath)
Virtually Speaking
Texting (David Crystal)
r u online? (Kris Axtman)
Thx for the IView! I Wud ♥ 2 Work 4 U!! ;) (Sarah E. Needleman)
The Other Side of E-Mail (Robert Kuttner)
Blogging in the Global Lunchroom (Geoffrey Nunberg)
5. The Communication Gap: How We Speak to Each Other
He Says/She Says
Women Talk Too Much (Janet Holmes)
No Detail is Too Small (Tony Korheiser)
Sex Differences (Ronald Maculay)
Right-Through Stare (Aletheia Plankiw)
“I’ll Explain it To You” Lecturing and Listening (Deborah Tannen)
Visual: Men Are from Belgium, Women Are from New Brunswick
What We Say and How We Say It
Nonverbal Behavior: Culture, Gender, and the Media (Kwal Gamble and Gamble)
Small-Scale Communication (Jennifer Akin)
The Like Virus (David Grambs)
Some Friends and I Started Talking (Margaret J.Wheatley)
Speaking Personally (John Guinan)
6. The Language of Humor: What Makes Us Laugh
What’s Funny?
Outsiders/Insiders (Joseph Boskin)
Laughter's New Profile (Lorraine Ali)
Why Black Humor is So Black (Wil Haygood)
What’s So Funny? (Regina Barreca)
Funny Box: Editorial Cartoons
What Is a Cartoon? (Mort Goldberg)
Visuals: Sample Cartoons
Freedom of Speech and the Editorial Cartoon? (Doug Marlette)
Defiantly Incorrect: Humor of John Callahan (Timothy Egan)
Visual: Callahan Cartoon “Wheelchair Posse”
7. Language and the Media
The Language of Advertising
With These Words I Can Sell You Anything (William Lutz)
The Language of Advertising (Charles A O'Neill)
Language Abuse (Herschell Gordon Lewis)
How Tobacco Company "Anti-Smoking" Ads Appeal to Teens (Carrie McLaren)
Visual: Current Advertisements
In Your Living Room: Language in Popular Media
TV News: All the World in Pictures (Neil Postman and Steve Powers)
Are We Losing Da Youth? (Danny Schechter)
Letting Words Fly (John T. McWhorter)
Is Bad Language Unacceptable on TV? (BBC Online)
Taking TV’s 'War of Words' Too Literally (Deborah Tannen)
8. Censorship and Free Speech
Biased Language and Hate Speech
Hate Speech (Robin Tomach Lakoff)
Bias-Free