You Know what I Mean?: Words, Contexts and Communication
Does a word mean what it says? Sometimes - but not always. Everyone thinks that meaning is contained within words - like sardines in a tin, or milk in a bottle. After all, words are nice stable things that you can look up in a dictionary aren't they? But dictionaries only take us so far… If you eavesdropped on a teenage conversation, rushing to a dictionary - with its definitions frozen in time - wouldn't help much. Who's using a word and to whom, in what context, for what purpose - all these...
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Celebrated writer and linguist Ruth Wajnryb explores how and why our language works the way it does.
1. Nuts and bolts; 2. Word behaviours; 3. Between the lines; 4. Political; 5. Inspired by books, films and media; 6. Gender; 7. Text-types; 8. Fields of discourse; 9. Word biographies; 10. World Englishes.
