Social Linguistics

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman's personal quest to speak fluent Italian. For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with "the world's most loved and lovable language" together with explorations of Italy's history.

Thomas De Quincey's highly charged and hauntingly accurate account of laudanum addiction is considered the root of all drug novels. From Baudelaire to Burroughs, Confessions of an English Opium Eater paved the way for later generations of writers. Initially prescribed as pain relief for a chronic condition, De Quincey soon found himself compelled by the opium experience.

We live in a world ridden with conflict. Everyone knows about it and only a select few have any motivation to do anything about it. In general, people stick to their point of view believing that everyone else is wrong and most never stop to consider that each individual acts upon their "right way", that is, their individual values. This misunderstanding in society of the way we think, not what we think, or how we think, leads to conflict which manifests in personal relationships, business relationships, community struggle, and even conflicts at the global level.

In a fascinating tour of creativity and the brain, Nancy Andreasen, professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa and the winner of the National Medal of Science, explores how the human brain achieves creative breakthroughs--in art, literature, music, and science--the role of genes and environment, extraordinary creativity vs. ordinary creativity, and the question of genius and insanity.

A skillfully updated edition of The F-Word which renders a comprehensive portrait of English's most notorious and colorful word.

The Woodlanders is vintage Hardy. The story revolves around the young woman Grace Melbury, who returns to the leafy world of Little Hintock and soon finds herself at the center of a number of tragic events. In penetrating, incisive, and beautiful prose, Hardy tells a moving tale of unrequited love as fate and the constraints of society thwart the happiness of our heroine. The leafy world of Blackmoor Vale and the hamlet of Little Hintock are all lovingly described by Hardy, who named The Woodlanders as the favorite of all his novels.

This novel tells the story of impoverished, embarrassment-prone Archibald "Archie" Moffam and his difficult relationship with his art-collecting, hotel-owning, millionaire father-in-law, Daniel Brewster, the father of Archie's new bride, Lucille. Archie's attempts to ingratiate himself with Brewster only get him further into trouble. The story takes place in New York City.

The action is set during World War I. While John Clayton, Lord Greystoke (Tarzan), is away from his plantation home in British East Africa, it is destroyed by invading German troops from Tanganyika. On his return, he discovers among many burned bodies one that appears to be the corpse of his wife, Jane Porter Clayton. Another fatality is the Waziri warrior Wasimbu, left crucified by the Germans. Maddened, the ape-man seeks revenge not only on the perpetrators of the tragedy, but all Germans, and he sets out for the battlefront of the war in East Africa.

¿Qué pasiones y valores se esconden detrás de una e, una “x” o una “@”? El tema central sobre el lenguaje inclusivo fue desarrollado para reflexionar sobre este fenómeno lingüístico y sus implicaciones sociales. Chilango para todes es un recorrido a través de la historia del lenguaje inclusivo y su presente.

With our earliest utterances, we announce ourselves—and are recognized—as persons ready for social life. With our final ones, we mark where others must release us to death's embrace. In Bye Bye I Love You, linguist and author Michael Erard explores these phenomena, commonly called "first words" and "last words," uncovering their cultural, historical, and biological entanglements and honoring their deep private significance.

¿Quieres ser más agradable? ¿O defenderte con estilo de los ataques verbales de otros? ¿O sencillamente enfrentar de mejor manera las conversaciones difíciles con tu pareja o en tu trabajo? Este es un audiolibro para aprender a ganar amigos y ser excelente en situaciones sociales. Se centra en tácticas y técnicas para ser más carismático, encantador y más ingenioso, lo que sin duda te permitirá hacer frente a cualquier reunión social sin esfuerzo. Aprenderás a tener una conversación sin desperdiciar tu tiempo, sin aburrirte y sin ofender a nadie.

We invite you to understand dark psychology with practical explanations and effective and straightforward policies. Dark psychology will help you fully understand happiness by studying psychological methods that instantaneously work. It will enable you to improve the value of your life, not to harm you. You can manage them to your advantage in a short period, if you've always been a victim of your relationship.

The third and final collection in this series of reflections written by one of the wittiest and most whimsical men to press pen against paper. As well as his usual take on the foibles of his fellow Englishmen and women, Jerome ruminates, in his typically liberal fashion, about far-flung countries such as Russia, Africa and China. Jerome was never a 'jelly-bellied flag-flapping imperialist', and his vision, experience and worldliness are revealed to us over multiple essays.

George Horace Lorimer is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, where he was credited with promoting and discovering authors like Jack London. Lorimer compiled his life advice into the fictional letters from John "Old Gorgon" Graham to his son Pierrepont. John Graham is a Chicago-based pork and finance baron. In the letters Pierrepont receives advice for his different stages of life. Old Gorgon's advice is packed throughout the book, easy to understand, and still rings true today.

To the Last Man is Zane Grey's archetypal tale of a bitter feud between two unforgiving factions: the ranchers led by Jean Isbel and, on the other side, Lee Jorth and his band of cattle rustlers. In the grip of a relentless code of loyalty to their own people, they fight the war of the Tonto Basin, desperately, doggedly, to the last man, neither side seeing the futility of it until it is too late.

Nearly everyone swears - whether it's over a few too many drinks, in reaction to a stubbed toe, or in flagrante delicto. And yet we sit idly by as words are banned from television and censored in books. We insist that people excise profanity from their vocabularies, and we punish children for yelling the very same dirty words that we'll mutter in relief seconds after they fall asleep. Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny.

A dialogue between Socrates and Meno probes the subject of ethics. Can goodness be taught? If it can, then we should be able to find teachers capable of instructing others about what is good and bad, right and wrong, or just and unjust.

Published shortly after his high school graduation, “Beyond Lies the Wub” is the classic short story by science fiction master Philip K. Dick. Peterson, a crew member from a spaceship visiting Mars, purchases a giant, pig-like creature called a wub. Although Captain Franco means to make a meal of the strange beast, the wub proves to be likeable and intelligent by discussing the travels of Odysseus and the impact of myth on the human spirit.

The crew of a European ship discovers the utopian island of Bensalem, having gotten lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere near Peru. The crew spend time learning about the ways of the people of Bensalem, a very chaste group of Christians. The most important part of the island is their university, a state-sponsored scientific institution known as Salomon's House. The narrator is chosen from amongst the crew to get a one-on-one explanation of the way their society works, and he learns about the various buildings and jobs that exist on Bensalem.

There are so many Latin phrases in everyday use that often we use them without understanding the background and context within which they were actually used. 'Carpe diem'; 'Stet'; 'Memento mori'; 'Et tu Brute' – examples would fill a book. And often these phrases are also used in English translation: 'The die is cast'; 'crossing the Rubicon'; 'Rome was not built in a day'.