Masterlist of pop linguistics books and lingfic
Looking for pop linguistics books or linguistics-related fiction to read, find in a library, ask for as a gift, or give to a language nerd in your life? Here’s an extensive list of books you might be interested in.
John McWhorter has many pop linguistics books, including notably: The Language Hoax, The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, What Language Is, Word on the Street
David Crystal also has many pop linguistics books, including more recently: the history of English spelling, A Little Book of Language (note that Crystal also writes “interesting facts about words” books, so check the description if this is a relevant factor for you)
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker (the one style book on this entire list, because he approaches it from a genuinely linguistic perspective: see my review here).
The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox (about cracking Linear B)
You Are What You Speak by RL Greene
The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (about the history of language)
How Babies Talk by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
In The Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent (my review)
The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson (my livetweet)
(Most of these I read when I was getting into linguistics so I can vouch for them being interesting enough when I read them such that they’ve stuck in my mind many years later, but I’m not sure how they’d stack up on re-reading. Just so you know.)
Steven Pinker’s pop linguistics books have gotten older but are still classics: The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, The Stuff of Thought
Older David Crystal books: How Language Works, The Stories of English
Verbatim (a collection of essays on pop linguistics, edited by Erin McKean - my comments)
Talk, Talk, Talk by Jay Ingram
A Mouthful of Air by Anthony Burgess
Alpha Beta by John Man (about the history of the alphabet)
Hearing Gesture by Susan Goldin-Meadow
Talking Hands by Margalit Fox (my comments)
The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky
Babel No More by Michael Erard
Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages by Joseph Solodow (my review)
Predicting New Words by Allan Metcalf
Shady Characters by Keith Houston (about punctuation marks - my comments)
Speculative Grammarian’s satirical linguistics book (my review - you should probably already know some linguistics before reading it though)
An ABC for Baby Linguists (great for linguist parents!)
The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder (conlangs, older)
How to Keep Your Language Alive and Language Revitalization for Families, both by Leanne Hinton (see also Ola!, and my thoughts on it)
Beginner-friendly textbooks
Comprehensive but more friendly than actual textbooks:
Introducing Linguistics: An Illustrated Guide
Actual textbooks, still at an introductory level:
Contemporary Linguistics (the fifth edition is also fine, and cheaper)
iLanguage (previous edition is cheaper)
Describing Morphosyntax is popular among budding conlangers
Fiction that contains a significant linguistic element, enjoyable for both practising linguists and language enthusiasts:
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (my comments)
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (my livetweet)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (my comments) and Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, both of which do interesting things with language & gender
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (my livetweet)
Eunoia by Christian Bök (my comments). It’s entirely online here.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (review from @superlinguo)
Native Tongue trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin
“The Story of Your Life” (short story) by Ted Chiang (there’s a movie coming out about this soon)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Embassytown by China Miéville
The Lord of the Rings books
See also more recommendations on the #lingfic hashtag and this list at conlang.org
Anyone else have pop linguistics books (or #lingfic) to recommend, or reviews to link to? I’ll try to keep this list updated as I hear of and review other books, old and new, so make sure to check out the source post if you’re viewing it as a reblog.
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