100 Books Like How Language Works

How and why do languages get lost and die out? In this fascinating, beautifully written account, Evans presents a highly informative story about the scores of endangered languages in the world today.

Many languages are losing speakers because they are surrounded by groups that use a different majority language, and this pressures the minority-language speakers to stop using their own language.

The tragedy is that losing a language also means losing one’s culture and one’s history. This is a book that is hard to put down. 

This is a great introduction to what linguists do when they analyze languages to see how they work.

Bolinger spent his life observing how speakers use language, making notes on how and when they hesitate as they plan what to say, common errors they make, and what all this tells us about how language functions as a tool for communication. 

And he drew on his observations to tell the story of what is involved in studying how languages work. I regularly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what linguistics is. (It is not being a polyglot!)

Levelt offers a wonderfully informative history of the sources of many current ideas in psycholinguistics. Levelt also shares major questions about language processing (how we understand and produce language).

He takes up ideas raised long ago, ideas that couldn’t be studied at the time without a phonetic alphabet. For example, without audio and video-recording methods or the sophisticated equipment for studying how language is stored in the brain, all available today. 

I find it salutary to recognize how much of what we think is new in today’s research was actually recognized and discussed at least a century ago or more.

The meanings of words allow us to convey all sorts of intentions, yet meanings change over time, get confused, or lost, or re-assigned to fit changes in society.

This book offers an accessible and thoughtful introduction to how meaning is used by speakers of a language. Lyons focuses on the relationships between the meanings of words. He examines specific semantic fields, such as terms for kin, farm animals, carpentry tools, plants, birds, and sailing.

He shows how the relations between words in a semantic field (e.g., animal, dog, spaniel; walk, stroll, run; mast, sail, tack, rig) play a critical role in terms of the meanings available when speakers combine words in their utterances. Word meanings are the basic building blocks in the constructions speakers use every day.

This book really drew me to the power of language because it completely changed the way I think about everyday conversations and their power to shape relationships. Tannen’s exploration of conversational style taught me that it is not just what we say but how we say it that shapes our relationships. Misunderstandings I’d brushed off made sense: the clashes between my need to be direct and others' preference for subtlety, for example, or why certain conversations left me feeling unheard.

This book was empowering and humbling at the same time. It offers a guide to better communication that doesn’t point fingers but helps you see the nuance in every exchange. If you’ve ever asked, “Why did they take that the wrong way?” this book will resonate.

This book thoroughly debunks one of the biggest gender myths that have emerged over the last 50 years. It takes as its jumping-off point the media empire that started from John Gray’s books (based on an idea first argued for, less essentially, by linguist Deborah Tannen), books which have been one of the main forces in perpetuating the myth that men and women are categorically different from one another in terms of interactional behavior and temperament.

The reality is that there is more difference between women and other women and between men and other men than there is between women and men.  It is, in fact, the myth that creates the differences by pointing us to see gender differences while ignoring other reasons for difference. Cameron is forceful and witty, and the book is an enjoyable read even as it does its work of revealing the powerful effects of gender… show more.

The words "language" and "myth" have graced the covers of many books, but this one is my favorite. This collection, edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, brings together world-renowned linguists to tackle a spectrum of unhelpful and incorrect assumptions about language. What sets this book apart is its sharp focus on how people’s attitudes toward language often recreate damaging stereotypes.

Bauer, Trudgill, and their contributors, several of whom I was taught by, arrest these misconceptions with insights grounded in linguistic research. Each myth is debunked in short, punchy chapters that are as engaging as they are informative. I love how this book leaves you feeling smarter and better equipped to think critically about the language myths we encounter every day. 

This book dives into the ways language is intertwined with power in society. Fairclough’s analysis opened my eyes to how even the simplest phrases can reinforce hierarchies and ideologies.

It’s not an easy read, and it has been written more for an academic audience, but it’s so rewarding–every chapter feels like peeling back another layer of how communication works beneath the surface. If you’re interested in the hidden ways language shapes society, this is a must. 

The most valuable and practical part of the book is their “mapping your immunity to change” process.

This process asks people to understand the things that they do, how they do the things that they do, and how the way they think can keep people from actually being able to change.

The book moves from an individual level to how organizations talk, and how people and organizations talk together. It changes how people can work together. 

I was captivated by the first chapter of this book, which summarises the case for considering language to be a human instinct. I love the way that it deploys rational thought and evidence in pursuit of intriguing 'grand theorizing'. It's a compelling read and expertly constructed introduction to the psychology (and sociology) of language. It is also a case study in how to build arguments.

The diminishing role of rational thought and evidence-based argument in the wider political sphere is one of the greatest threats to our world. So, when we read books like this, we are not simply making a personal decision. We are also making a political statement about the kind of world we want to live in.