Book description
Once languages become written, they change. Only in writing does
language develop the artfulness and richness that we associate with a
Shakespeare, a Proust or a Whitman. Yet over the last forty years, the
English-language has effectively gone into reverse - taking our lead
from America and the legacy of the 1960s, our culture increasingly
privileges the oral over the written, spurning the art of elaborated,
'written'-style language in favour of returning to the state of a
spoken culture. Parallel developments have occurred in music.
In this controversial and thought-provoking book, John McWhorter
argues that the 1960's rejection of cultural traits associated with
the Establishment, as well as a democratic celebration of what anyone
can do over what requires training or talent, has led to our culture
being increasingly impoverished, both intellectually and artistically...
John McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an
associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. He is the author of
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
, as well as a book about black English,
The Word on the Street.
