Senator S. I. Hayakawa discusses the role of language in human life, the many functions of language, and how language—sometimes without our knowing—shapes our thinking in this engaging and highly respected book. Provocative and erudite, it examines the relationship between language and racial and religious prejudice; the nature and dangers of advertising from a linguistic point of view; and, in an additional chapter called “The Empty Eye,” the content, form, and hidden message of television, from situation comedies to news coverage to political advertising.

    Covering thinkers from Aristotle to Saussure and Chomsky, "Introducing Linguistics" reveals the rules and beauty that underlie language, our most human skill.

    The renowned Acceleread Method helps you to break old habits that may be slowing you down, and develop strategies for increased comprehension in less time, with eye exercises to control and expand vision drills for practicing pacing and block reading strategies for mastering the "two-stop" reading method...and more! Boost your reading power today with Triple Your Reading Speed.

    IELTS test scores are used as a measure of English language proficiency by educational institutions, government departments and agencies, and professional organizations. This revised and updated test preparation manual for ESL students covers all parts of the IELTS and all of its question types: multiple-choice, short answer, sentence completion, flowchart completion, graphs, tables, making notes, summarizing, labeling diagrams and maps, classification, matching, and selecting from a list. The manual also offers four practice tests that reflect the most recent actual tests. The book’s tests come with audio for all four tests, answers, and listening and reading modules with answer keys.

    What is good English, and why do we need it? The Queen's English shows how the English language, used properly, has great power to instruct, move and entertain people, but used incorrectly, can lead to a lack of clarity and confusion. This book informs in a light-hearted way, reminding readers how to use the basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling, as well as further teaching them new tips and tricks of style, rhetoric, vocabulary and the use of foreign phrases, to give their writing and speech a stylish and impressive flair. The book also shows the perils of using language incorrectly, offering extremely (if unintentionally) humorous examples of where bad English can cause one thing to mean something entirely different! Authoritative yet entertaining, and illustrated with pithy drawings, this is the ideal book for anyone who strives for clear, stylish and accurate communication.

    But whether you use it just well enough to get your daily business done, or you're an expert with a red pen who never omits a comma or misplaces a modifier, you must have noticed that there are some things about this language that are just weird.Perhaps you're reading a book and stop to puzzle over absurd spelling rules (Why are there so many ways to say '-gh'?), or you hear someone talking and get stuck on an expression (Why do we say How dare you but not How try you?), or your kid quizzes you on homework (Why is it eleven and twelve instead of oneteen and twoteen?). Suddenly you ask yourself, Wait, why do we do it this way? You think about it, try to explain it, and keep running into walls. It doesn't conform to logic. It doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. There doesn't seem to be any rule at all.There might not be a logical explanation, but there will be an explanation, and this book is here to help.In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more. Along the way she tells the story of the many influences--from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers--that made our language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, Highly Irregular is essential reading for anyone who has paused to wonder about our marvelous mess of a language.

    Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by", metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    These top guns of tournament poker are frequent winners in today's highly competitive online scene, as well as in live tourneys. Their collective experience and track record is staggering: more than 35,000 tournaments played, more than 1,000 final tables made, over 200 major wins, and more than $6,000,000 in cashes. They regularly outplay fields consisting of other top professionals victories that are documented by detailed online hand histories.Are you ready to learn winning ways from today's true tournament experts?The authors are not only consistent winners, but powerful teachers as well. Step-by-step, they reveal their decision-making processes, using hands drawn from actual play not examples contrived to fit a particular poker theory.Reading this book is like attending a master class in tournament poker.You'll see the way cutting-edge pros use their wisdom and incredibly extensive experience to analyze almost every poker situation imaginable. Deep-stacked or short-stacked, against single or multiple opponents, you'll learn the skills that will make you a winner, including: - When and how to play aggressively or tightly- When to make moves- When to make continuation bets and when to hold back- How to induce and pick off bluffs- How to accumulate chips without constantly risking your tournament life.Poker is a fun game, but it's even more fun when you win.If you want to become a great tournament player, shouldn't you be learning from the best? NOW You can!

    But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” (Tom Wolfe, Harper’s), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist today.Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, Daniel Everett’s discoveries have upended the contemporary linguistic world, reverberating far beyond academic circles. While conducting field research in the Amazonian rainforest, Everett came across an age-old language nestled amongst a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Challenging long-standing principles in the field, Everett now builds on the theory that language was not intrinsic to our species. In order to truly understand its origins, a more interdisciplinary approach is needed—one that accounts as much for our propensity for culture as it does our biological makeup.Language began, Everett theorizes, with Homo Erectus, who catalyzed words through culturally invented symbols. Early humans, as their brains grew larger, incorporated gestures and voice intonations to communicate, all of which built on each other for 60,000 generations. Tracing crucial shifts and developments across the ages, Everett breaks down every component of speech, from harnessing control of more than a hundred respiratory muscles in the larynx and diaphragm, to mastering the use of the tongue. Moving on from biology to execution, Everett explores why elements such as grammar and storytelling are not nearly as critical to language as one might suspect.In the book’s final section, Cultural Evolution of Language, Everett takes the ever-debated “language gap” to task, delving into the chasm that separates “us” from “the animals.” He approaches the subject from various disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, and archaeology, to reveal that it was social complexity, as well as cultural, physiological, and neurological superiority, that allowed humans—with our clawless hands, breakable bones, and soft skin—to become the apex predator.How Language Began ultimately explains what we know, what we’d like to know, and what we likely never will know about how humans went from mere communication to language. Based on nearly forty years of fieldwork, Everett debunks long-held theories by some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Plato to Chomsky. The result is an invaluable study of what makes us human.

    When there were still people around to talk to, I would introduce myself as a drinker with a writing problem. It sounded witty at the time, and certainly got a smile once in a while from the ladies. None of that matters now. There are no people left to read my books, and nobody left to listen to my attempts at wit. Now it's just me, sitting in my house on the hill, watching the undead rampage through what we humans once called our world. I sometimes wonder why I still live when those much younger, stronger, smarter and fitter than me perished. Maybe it's just dumb luck. But maybe I am being left alive for a purpose. Nobody may have cared much for my novel, but maybe this is what I was meant to write. Maybe this is what I was meant to be. The chronicler of the undead. This is my story.

    HOGE, THE WORLD’S #1 ENGLISH TEACHER, teaches you his most powerful methods for learning to speak English fluently and confidently. Famous for training corporate and government leaders, A.J. Hoge gives you a step by step program teaching you the system that will help you achieve ultimate success with English.Effortless English will.....Teach you how to overcome nervousness, shyness, and fear when speaking EnglishShow you how to achieve a high TOEFL, IELTS, or TOEIC scoreHelp you learn vocabulary 4-5 times fasterTell you how to feel stronger, calmer, and more powerful when speaking EnglishTeach you how to understand native speakers and communicate clearly with themHelp you get better jobs using English“You have studied English many years, yet you still do not speak well. You read English but you feel nervous and frustrated when speaking. It is time for a change. I will teach you to speak English quickly, easily, and automatically using my Effortless English System (TM). You can achieve success now simply by changing the way you learn English.” — A.J. Hoge

    In his witty way, Mr. Safire enlightens us concerning proper usage, correct pronunciation, the roots of our daily discourse, and the vacuous vogue lingo in which "subsume" is co-opting "co-opt," wood-burning stoves become "energy systems," and stores that sell eyeglasses squint out at us as "vision centers."He is aided in his campaign for precision and clarity in language by a legion of word buffs, language lovers, and learned eccentrics--many of them world-class wordsmen in their own right.Here are Mr. Safire's delightful, crotchety, subtly informative, and awesomely informed comments, decisions, and advisories--the best of his famous column in The New York Times. Plus scores of letters written by enthusiastic or furious readers, who glory in nailing an expert to the wall.

    

    A translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, Lomb worked in 16 languages for state and business concerns in her native Hungary. She achieved further fame by writing books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots.Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, first published in 1970, is a collection of anecdotes and reflections on language learning. Because Dr. Lomb learned her languages as an adult, after getting a PhD in chemistry, the methods she used will thus be of particular interest to adult learners who want to master a foreign language.