eush:
Cut me some slack, I’m only a fake linguist! This one is good so far, and right at my level, but I am wary of any book with Internet shoehorned in the title.
Tristn, what books would you recommend for someone interested in linguistics and language but with not much formal training?
To be fair, I only ragged on Crystal because I had to write reviews of three of his books and Language and the Internet was just depressingly superficial and dated. He would get stodgy about how there’s too much crap on the internet, and he practically worshipped Wired and hackers. It was a Gen-X mess.
Crystal still is a good place to start (it didn’t get that nice Penguin edition for nothing), as is Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct. My big kick as of late has been Douglas Hofstadter though he’s more about cognition and formal structures than language. You could also look for the Language Log’s book Far From The Madding Gerund at your library. If were ruling out formal textbooks, Wikipedia of course is good.
