Preface

If you’ve ever purchased a new software package or a computer game, you’ll have probably found a file labelled ‘READ ME FIRST’, containing basic information on how to get started, and use the product effectively. Having briefly perused its contents, you feel ready to explore the software for yourself in whatever order you choose. The chapters of this book can likewise be read in any order and assume no prior knowledge of linguistics. But if you’re new to the subject, it makes sense to start with Chapter 1: ‘Thinking like a linguist’.

Many people find linguistics disorientating at first, for two reasons. Firstly, linguistic terminology can seem confusing or opaque to the uninitiated. To guide you through the subject’s metalanguage, new terms will appear in bold type throughout the chapters of this book. But a second, perhaps more fundamental, reason why the subject can appear daunting is that linguists approach their subject matter in ways which can at first seem strange, or even counter-intuitive. To look at their subject matter objectively, linguists have to strip away the value judgements we are used to making about language and perhaps no longer even notice. Having explored linguists’ approach to the subject in Chapter 1, we consider, in Chapters 2 and 3, how and for what reasons human beings have reflected on the nature of language in the past, and how their thinking has shaped our present-day understanding. Readers may find these chapters helpful in illuminating concepts introduced in Chapters 4–10, which are designed to cover similar ground to introductory linguistics courses offered at undergraduate level. Attention turns in Chapters 11–13 to language variation and change at the micro level (within a single language) and at the macro level (selection of language varieties by individuals and societies).

There are many ways of ‘doing linguistics’, only some of which can be described here. It is hoped that, as well as supporting students who are following linguistics courses as part of a degree programme, this book will inspire readers to find new ways of looking at language for themselves.

David Hornsby