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Index
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Foreword
List of Illustrations
Planet Word
CHAPTER 1: Origins
Talking Animals
Grey Matter
How We Learned to Talk
FoxP2 – the Language Gene
‘All Gone Sticky’
The Wug Test
Feral Children
Sign Languages
‘Eskimos Have a Hundred Words for Snow’
Fairy Tales and PIE
CHAPTER 2: Identity
Amongst the Turkana
The Akha: the Politics of Language
Irish: Famine and Revival
Nipperlings and Waterstuff – the English Story
You Say Oïl, I Say Oc
Parlez-vous Franglais?
The Survival of Basque
The Story of Hebrew
Yiddish: Not Just for Schmucks
Esperanto: Language and Utopia
Globish: a Language to Do Business With
A Klingon Hamlet
Dialects and Accents
CHAPTER 3: Uses and Abuses
The Seven Words
Taboos
Why We Love to Swear
Coprolalia
The Mechanics of Swearing
Possessed by the Devil
Brian Blessed’s Swear Box
TV Humour and the Curse
Euphemisms
Medicine and Euphemism
Innuendo
Politeness
Jargon
Medical and Legal Jargon
Plain English in the Workplace
Doublespeak with Political Intent
Modern Taboos
Slang
Cockney Rhyming Slang
Polari
Aussie Slang
I ♥ Slang
Textese
Teenglish (or Romeo and His Fit Bitch Jules)
Ins and Outs
Hip-hop and Rap
CHAPTER 4: Spreading the Word
Cuneiform
The Decipherers
The Rosetta Stone
The Alphabet
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Pinyin
Printing
The First Books
Diderot and the Encyclopédie
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
Not Just a Dictionary but a National Institution
Libraries
Penny Dreadful to Thumb Novel
Death of the Book?
Message to the Future
CHAPTER 5: The Power and the Glory
Back in Turkanaland
Songlines
Homer
William Goldman
Ulysses
Yeats
Shakespeare and the Three Thespians
The Professor and Bob Dylan
Funeral Blues
Advertising
Oratory
Propaganda
The Future
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
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