Doing Our Own Thing

The Degradation of Language and Music and Why Should We, Like, Care

by John McWhorter

John McWhorter believes that as English, both its written and its spoken aspects, has become devalued, we are the poorer for it. Echoing Orwell's dictum that bad writing can lead to fuzzy thinking, McWhorter sees the situation as an unfortunate one, afflicting English-speakers of all nationalities and types, from politician George W. Bush to poet Billy Collins--and, he admits, himself.

Available editions of Doing Our Own Thing

	9781592400164, Hardcover, Penguin Group USA, 2003 $2.24 (Good) Other copies of 9781592400164

Publisher Notes

Critically acclaimed linguist John McWhorter has devoted his career to exploring the evolution of language. He has often argued that language change is inevitable and in general culturally neutral--languages change rapidly even in indigenous cultures where traditions perpetuate; and among modernized peoples, culture endures despite linguistic shifts. But in his provocative new book, DOING OUR OWN THING, McWhorter draws the line when it comes to how cultural change is turning the English language upside down in America today, and how public English is being overwhelmed by street English, with serious consequences for our writing, our music, and our society.
McWhorter explores the triumph of casual over formal speech--particularly since the dawn of the 1960s counterculture--and its effect on American's ability to write, read, critique, argue, and imagine. In faces of this growing rift between written English and spoken English, the intricate vocabularies and syntactic roadmaps of our language appear to be slipping away, eroding our intellectual and artistic capacities. He argues that "our increasing alienation from 'written language' signals a gutting of our intellectual powers, our self-regard as a nation, and thus our very substance as a people."
Timely, thought-provoking, and compellingly written, DOING OUR OWN THING is sure to stoke many debates about the fate of our threatened intellectual cultures, and the destiny of our democracy.

Media Reviews

"Laden with contemporary pop culture references and humorous asides, this is an entertaining polemic that brings linguistics to the people, while lamenting the populist mentality that has made being cool more critical than being articulate."

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