Books for Linguistics Book Club

This is the reading list for a popular linguistics book club that I ran for a few years. Wow I read a lot of books. I recommend these for any linguistics book club that has a general audience. Not all of them are strictly about the science of linguistics, some of them are just related to the world of words. I’d re-read all except about one or two of these

How Babies Talk- Golinkoff

Elivish to Klingon- Evans

Babel No More- Erard

Empires of the Word- Ostler (too long for a book club!)

Talking Hands- Fox

You are What you Speak – Robert Greene

Atoms of Language- Baker

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue- McWorter (Everything by McWorter is good for a book club)

The Talking Ape- Burling

In the Beginning- Hoffman

Bastard Tongues- Bickerton

Origins of the Specious: Myths of English- O’Connor

Speak Like a Native- Janish- (I actually don’t recommend this book, there are better ones)

Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes- Everett

The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel, Ostler

“The Horse, the Wheel, and Language”, by D W Anthony

“The Origin of Language” – Ruhlen

Dreaming in Chinese- Fallows

Through The Language Glass- Deutscher

“The Professor and the Madman”, by Simon Winchester

Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought

Adam’s Tongue, Bickerton

Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich

Land of the Invented Language by Arika Okrent

Language Death

“Language, Bananas, and Bonobos”, by Neil Smith

“Talking from 9-5″, Tannen

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

“Metaphors we Live By”, by George Lakoff

Words and Rules, Pinker

The Language Imperative Haden-Elgin

The Unfolding of Language, Deutscher

“Power of Babel”, McWhorter

“Mother Tongue”, Bill Bryson