Word Play: What Happens When People Talk

"Word Play" is one of the few books that has stayed in my memory for decades. How many works of nonfiction actually provide useful ideas that you find yourself using on a regular basis? You know how it is, a book may be interesting for the duration of time in which you're reading it but not long after it dissipates from memory and eventually winds up being sent to the thrift store. Not so with Peter Farb's perennial from 1973. "Word Play" inadvertently wound up being my introduction to the psychology of linguistics. Farb analyzes how language is used across various cultures and how that use of language reveals how those cultures think. You and I might think of distance in terms of miles but the language of a Native American tribe speaks of distance in terms of time, "three days' journey". How do these differences in language influence the way we perceive the world around us? Examination of such models becomes one of the most fascinating ideas touched upon in "Word Play". In recent years linguistics has become a hot topic due to the purveyors of neurolinguistic programming, but Farb's work preceded that trend's ascendancy. Its anthropological approach makes it more engaging than most of those works that focus on diagnostics or detailed structure of language. The first half the book was spellbinding. Once I got the point, the second half amounted to more of the same and I came to the conclusion that I'd already gotten from the book what I'd intended. Nevertheless, this is one of a dozen or two books that has found a permanent place in my library.

I teach English as a Second Language in Taiwan. Unlike most books about linguistics, this book helped me understand "what happens when people talk", and that has made me a more effective teacher. I re-read it several times a year to keep its insights fresh in my mind. Each re-reading reveals new depths of understanding. In spite of being almost 10 years old, I still regard as the best of its kind.

I've been on a kick recently to read all the books I can get my hands on pertaining to language. I found this one in the philosophy/linguistics section of my local bookstore. It subsequently sat in my "to-read" pile (which now numbers around 1,462 books) for a few months. When I finally picked it up I was floored by the amount of fascinating information it contained about English and its similarities to the world's other languages. The rather surprising but clearly correct conclusion of the book is that no matter how weird, foreign, alien, or just bizarre other languages may sound to us, human languages all share the same basic means and mechanics of expression! None are more inherently "difficult" than others, as is borne out by the ease with which infants in every speech community of the world pick up their native language with the same ease and celerity. The author also blows to smithereens the notion that English or any other language is "better" or "more expressive" than any other, and demonstrates that English prevails as the world's preferred language largely as the result of geopolitical factors, rather than its "superiority". In fact, whether a group of people speak English, Ancient Greek, Swahili, Apache, Russian, Chinese, Egyptian, Burmese, Polynesian, French, Latin or Eskimo language , every one of these speech communities possesses a tongue capable of rich expression, poetic nuance, literature, subtlety, and flights of imagination. Where they differ is that each one, is custom-suited to the physical realities and the cultural traditions of the particular place, and represent the best means for the populace there to communicate and transact business. So much for the notion that when European explorers "discovered" indigenous communities in their journeys, that the natives spoke "primitive" tongues! This implication, with the benefit of modern linguistic knowledge and hindsight, was simply racist and chauvinistic. Did I mention that this book is written in a lively and entertaining manner, and is great fun and a very entertaining read? Well it is! I also very much enjoyed the chapters about verbal dueling, meta-language, and attempts to teach language to animals. If you are a word buff, I recommend this book to you wholeheartedly. Enjoy!