'No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.' Only words can do that. Words are magic. Words are fun.Join Gyles Brandreth - wit and word-meister, Just A Minute regular, One Show reporter, denizen of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, founder of the National Scrabble Championships, patron of The Queen's English Society, QI, Room 101, Have I Got News For You and Pointless survivor - on an uproarious and unexpected magic carpet ride around the awesome world of words and wordplay.Puns, palindromes, pangrams, Malaprops, euphemisms, mnemonics, acronyms, anagrams, alphabeticals, Tweets, verbiage, verbarrhea - if you can name it, you should find it here, along with the longest, shortest, wittiest, wildest, oldest, latest, oddest, most interesting and most memorable words in the English language - the richest, most remarkable language ever known.

Product Description: Written by the President of the Queen’s English Society and covering all of the basics, this clear and practical guide will teach anyone how to write and use English correctly. 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...read more

Product Description: Directness may often be considered rude in English, but in other languages it signals closeness and honesty. Equally, indirectness can be judged to be polite in English, whereas in other languages it can be regarded as cold and distancing...read more

Martin Hilpert combines construction grammar and advanced corpus-based methodology into a new way of studying language change. Constructions are generalizations over remembered exemplars of language use. These exemplars are stored with all their formal and functional properties, yielding constructional generalizations that contain many parameters of variation. Over time, as patterns of language use are changing, the generalizations are changing with them. This book illustrates the workings of constructional change with three corpus-based studies that reveal patterns of change at several levels of linguistic structure, ranging from allomorphy to word formation and to syntax. Taken together, the results strongly motivate the use of construction grammar in research on diachronic language change. This new perspective has wide-ranging consequences for the way historical linguists think about language change. It will be of particular interest to linguists working on morpho-syntax, sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics.

Product Description: Drawing on everyday telephone and video interactions, this book surveys how English speakers use grammar to formulate responses in ordinary conversation. The authors show that speakers build their responses in a variety of ways: the responses can be longer or shorter, repetitive or not, and can be uttered with different intonational 'melodies'...read more

Product Description: English is the dominant language of international business relations, and a good working knowledge of the language is essential for today’s legal or business professional. Written with the needs of both practitioners and students in mind, Legal English provides a comprehensive and highly practical approach to its subject-matter and addresses the key aspects of the use of English in commercial legal contexts...read more

Product Description: An A-Z of Effective Vocabulary covers the meaning and usage of 1001 words that you really do need to know. Whether you need guidance for a letter, job application, essay, proposal, interview, or presentation, this book can help you choose the words you need to create the right effect...read more

Product Description: Wrestling with Words and Meanings honors the life and career of Professor Keith Allan, commemorating at the same time the occasion of his 70th birthday. The book brings together top-level researchers in linguistics - colleagues, collaborators, and former students - who have all been inspired by Allan's work in some way...read more

Global English Slang brings together nineteen key international experts and provides a timely and essential overview of English slang around the world today. The book illustrates the application of a range of different methodologies to the study of slang and demonstrates the interconnection between the different sub-fields of linguistics. A key argument throughout is that slang is a function played by specific words or phrases rather than a characteristic inherent in the words themselves- what is slang in one context is not slang in another. The volume also challenges received wisdom on the nature of slang: that it is short-lived and that slang is restricted to verbal language. With an introduction by editor Julie Coleman, the topics covered range from Inner City New York slang and Hip Hop Slang to UK student slang and slang in Scotland. Authors also explore slang in Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, India and Hong Kong and the influence of English slang on Norwegian, Italian and Japanese. A final section looks at slang and new media including online slang usage, and the possibilities offered by the internet to document verbal and gestural slang. Global English Slang is an essential reference for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working in the areas of lexicology, slang and World Englishes.

Product Description: George Eliot’s writing process was meticulous in all of its phases, from manuscript to published text. Each of her extensive novels has a delicately crafted syntax, for she shaped her individual sentences as carefully as she wanted her public to read them...read more

Is it correct to pronounce "mischievous" as a three-syllable word (miss-chi-vuhss) or a four -syllable word (miss-chee-vi-uhss)? If it is right to use "alumni" as the plural of "alumnus," why is it wrong to use "octopi" as the plural of "octopus"? Should we write "12 am" or "12 a.m."? What is the difference between "principle" and "principal"? Is it "just desserts" or "just deserts"? If you don't know the answer to these questions, if you need a quick and effective guide to correct English, then Oxford A-Z of English Usage is just what you are looking for, containing a gold mine of useful advice on a wide array of common writing and speaking problems. Based on Oxford's world-renowned dictionary research program and packed with vivid examples of real usage (and misusage) from contemporary sources, this guide provides essential information on the kinds of issues writers face every day. Readers will find more than 600 entries arranged in alphabetical order, shedding light on common issues of uncertainty and confusion (affect / effect; compliment / complement; loath / loathe), on questions of punctuation and pronunciation, on grammatical terms, and much more. In addition, there are more than 20 special feature articles on specific topics such as abbreviation, euphemism, hyphenation, and folk etymology (where we learn that though more than half the examples in print use "just desserts," the proper word is "deserts," meaning reward, not "arid land"). With a clear and attractive two-color page design, Oxford A-Z of English Usage gives the reader quick and easy answers to their most common questions, with clear and coherent explanations and sample sentences. It will prove the first port of call for any reader seeking easy-to-understand, reliable help with English usage.

Product Description: This volume presents an in-depth study of the so-called irregular Past Tense (sing/sang) and Noun Plural (foot/feet) forms with Internal Vowel Alternation (IVA) in English demonstrating that they possess both a fixed phonological and semantic regularity...read more

Product Description: This volume investigates the changes undergone by written communication in our globalized world as English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). The latter usually functions as a language for communication purposes, but also becomes a language for identification purposes...read more