CI 775: Applied Linguistics: ESL/Bilingual Teaching

Linguist Edwin Battistella takes a hard look at traditional notions of bad language, arguing that they are often based in sterile conventionality.Examining grammar and style, cursing, slang, and political correctness, regional and ethnic dialects, and foreign accents and language mixing, Battistella discusses the strong feelings evoked by language variation, from objections to the pronunciation NU-cu-lar to complaints about bilingual education. He explains the natural desire for uniformity in writing and speaking and traces the association of mainstream norms to ideas about refinement, intelligence, education, character, national unity and political values. (Description from Google Books)

From histories of words to the word on the street, this completely new volume explores how language is changing, and gives a 'Word a Year' list for 1905 to 2005. The book covers new words, and the language of technology, politics, TV, and the media. Other topics covered include foreign words and phrases, word play, word histories, dialect, spelling, and current controversies of grammar and usage. (Description from Google Books)

In Slang: The People's Poetry, Adams covers this perennially interesting subject in a serious but highly engaging way, illuminating the fundamental question "What is Slang" and defending slang--and all forms of nonstandard English--as integral parts of the American language. (Description from Google Books)

The technological realm provides an unusually active laboratory not only for new ideas and products but also for the remarkable linguistic innovations that accompany and describe them. How else would words like qubit (a unit of quantum information), sock puppet (an illicit online alternate identity), or in vitro meat (chicken and beef grown in a laboratory) enter our language? In Virtual Words: Language from the Edge of Science and Technology, Jonathon Keats, author of Wired Magazine's monthly Jargon Watch column, investigates the interplay between words and ideas in our fast-paced tech-driven use-it-or-lose-it society. (Description from the WSU Online Catalog)

With more than 7,000 definitions, this book provides a definitive guide to the use of slang today. It deals with drugs, sport and contemporary society. (Description from Google Books)

Drawing on the resources of the Oxford English Dictionary and offering coverage of over 6000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney 'abaht' to the American term 'zowie', 'Stone the Crows' is a lively and authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries. (Description from the WSU Online Catalog)

Examines sociolinguistic questions and the dynamic state of American English, a language rich in regional variety, strong in global impact, and steeped in cultural controversy. (Description from the WSU Online Catalog)