How We Talk about Language

The most important challenges humans face - identity life death war peace the fate of our planet - are manifested and debated through language. This book provides the intellectual and practical tools we need to analyse how people talk about language how we can participate in those conversations and what we can learn from them about both language and our society. Along the way we learn that knowledge about language and its connection to social life is not primarily produced and spread by linguists or sociolinguists or even language teachers but through everyday conversations on-line arguments creative insults music art memes twitter-storms - any place language grabs people''s attention and foments more talk. An essential new aid to the study of the relationship between language culture and society this book provides a vision for language inquiry by turning our gaze to everyday forms of language expertise.