Linguistics & Semiotics - General & Miscellaneous

Verbal Hygiene

Name: Verbal Hygiene
Author: Deborah Cameron
ISBN: 9780415696005

by Deborah Cameron

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Overview

Verbal Hygiene discusses the use and abuse of language and questions what makes it good and bad, right and wrong. Verbal Hygiene examines a series of case studies with specific examples of practiced verbal hygiene which include the regulation of style by

editors; the teaching of English grammar in schools; the movements for and against so-called politically correct language; and the recent explosion of advice to women on how they can speak more effectively. In each case, Cameron argues that verbal hygiene serves important purposes for

those engaged in it--it offers a way of making sense of linguistic phenomena and is also a symbolic attempt to impose order on the social world.

About the Author, Deborah Cameron

Deborah Cameron is Professor of Language and Communication in the English Faculty of Oxford University. A sociolinguist and discourse analyst, she is the author of Good to Talk? (2000), On Language and Sexual Politics (2006) and The Myth of Mars and Venus (2007).