The Language War - Hardcover

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520216660 ISBN 13: 9780520216662

Publisher: University of California Press, 2000

Synopsis

Robin Lakoff gets to the heart of one of the most fascinating and pressing issues in American society today: who holds power and how they use it, keep it, or lose it. In a brilliant and vastly entertaining discussion of news events that have occupied an enormous amount of media space--political correctness, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, Hillary Rodham Clinton as First Lady, O. J. Simpson's murder trial, the Ebonics controversy, and the Clinton sex scandal--Lakoff shows that the struggle for power and status at the end of the century is being played out as a war over language. Controlling language is a basis for all power, she says, and therefore it is worth fighting for. As a result, newly emergent groups, especially blacks and women, are contending with middle- to upper-class white men for a share in "language rights."

Lakoff's introduction to linguistic theories and the philosophy of language lays the groundwork for an exploration of news stories that meet what she calls the UAT (Undue Attention Test). As the stories became the subject of talk-show debates, late-night comedy routines, Web sites, and magazine articles, they were embroidered with additional meanings, depending on who was telling the story. Race, gender, or both are at the heart of these stories, and each one is about the right to construct meanings from languagein short, to possess power. Because language tells us how we are connected to one another, who has power and who does not, the stories reflect the language war.

We use language to analyze what we call "reality," the author argues, but we mistrust how language is used today--witness the "politics of personal destruction" following the Clinton impeachment. Yet Lakoff sees in the struggle over language a positive goal: equality in the creation of our national discourse. Her writing is accessible and witty, and her excerpts from the media are used to great effect.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives (1990), Face Value: The Politics of Beauty (1984), and Language and Woman's Place (1975).

From the Back Cover

"Robin Lakoff is a national treasure. She is one of the most astute and knowledgeable linguists in the country (indeed, in the world), and one of the few who turns her analytic eye to the role of language in popular and political culture. It was she who pioneered the field of gender and language. She is poised to be recognized among the general reading public as she has long been recognized in the field of linguistics."―Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and The Argument Culture

"An excellent book. Robin Lakoff shows that if we do not understand how language is put to work in our world, we cannot understand our world, nor live in it effectively."―John Fiske, author of Media Matters

From the Inside Flap

"Robin Lakoff is a national treasure. She is one of the most astute and knowledgeable linguists in the country (indeed, in the world), and one of the few who turns her analytic eye to the role of language in popular and political culture. It was she who pioneered the field of gender and language. She is poised to be recognized among the general reading public as she has long been recognized in the field of linguistics."—Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and The Argument Culture

"An excellent book. Robin Lakoff shows that if we do not understand how language is put to work in our world, we cannot understand our world, nor live in it effectively."—John Fiske, author of Media Matters

Reviews

In a series of provocative, dazzlingly argued essays, Lakoff charts how the media's use of language shapes both public attitudes and social policies on current events, including the "political correctness" debate, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, the O.J. Simpson trial and the debate over "ebonics." A professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley, she discusses how specific words and linguistic constructs have adopted political meaning--such as George Will's use of an unidentified "we" in his columns, with the presumption that all readers share his ideas and values. Lakoff shines in her careful reading of how declarative sentences paraded as questions in the Hill/Thomas hearings or of how jokes about "Hebonics" (the Jewish-American language) underlined the unspoken racism in the media's attack on ebonics. She is also especially adept in her investigation of the language used in the media to "construct" the public image of Hillary Rodham Clinton, in which she exposes how subtle changes in word usage, grammatical construction and tone have helped create multiple personas for the First Lady--from a sexually predatory monster to a contemporary Eleanor Roosevelt--to suit the emotional and psychological needs of different constituencies. Witty and illuminating, Lakoff's analysis is an important addition to both linguistic and political studies. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Offering a linguist's view of big 1990s news stories, Lakoff (linguistics, Univ. of California, Berkeley) gives general readers insight into recent changes regarding language. She covers a range of topics (from politically correct phrases to the way news media influence events) to connect linguistics with politicsDcontributing to a trend in popular linguistics books that includes cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's latest, Words and Rules (LJ 12/99). Analyzing six news subjects (from Ebonics to the Clinton sex scandal), Lakoff applies linguistic theories and examines issues from a sociological/ political viewpoint. Overall, she successfully illustrates the importance of free speech in a democracy. Her tone is casual, and the prose is frequently laced with humor, anecdotes, and quotes from the media. For a related, more specialized treatment, look to John M. Conley and William M. O'Barr's examination of language in the operation of law in Just Words: Law, Language and Power (Univ. of Chicago, 2000). Recommended for larger public libraries.DMarianne Orme, West Lafayette, IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520216660
• ISBN 13: 9780520216662
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 332