ENGLISH

You Know what I Mean?: Words, Contexts and Communication

By Ruth Wajnryb

Book information

Year
2008
ISBN
0521878853, 9780521878852, 9780511429965
LCC
PE1460 .W215 2008
Open Library ID
OL16870743M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
926 kB (948464 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
240\235
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

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 influence the meaning of the language we use. The word's origins and history (its 'genetics') also help. Try teaching yourself another language from a phrasebook and you'll soon learn that you can be correct, in the formal sense, but still way behind the times in reality. In this book Wajnryb considers these and other questions to explore how and why our language works the way it does.

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