Language & Human Nature

As a professional writer and editor, the author has come to a critical view of the scholarly pursuit of linguistics, arguing that it was a mistake to move away from the valid knowledge of philology towards linguistics, which in endeavoring to be scientifically descriptive strips meaning from words. While not going as far as calling for an English Academy along the lines of the French Academy, he supports a more prescriptivist approach to language in light of the "language degradation" that results from the linguistic view of language and the difficulties it inflicts outside of the academy for professional writers and speakers, as well as for average citizens. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mark Halpern is a freelance editor, onetime software designer and programmer, onetime soldier, onetime college instructor in English. He has degrees from City College of New York and Columbia University in English Language & Literature; he’s written a book and several articles on computer programming; and he writes, these days, principally on the topic of the inter-relations among linguistics, language usage, and politics.