Social Linguistics

Listen to Captain of the Polestar with a movie-style soundtrack and amplify your audiobook experience. The Captain of the Polestar is a collection of strange mystery tales that are independent of each other, sometimes involving ship voyages, shipwrecks, amnesia, lost love, grand thefts, comedy, and fairy tales.

A collection of short stories from such favorites as Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling are joined by others written anonymously in this anthology which will have you scratching your head and listening just a bit longer to discover the key to the mysteries.

Mr. Royston is driving his hansom through the night-time streets of Melbourne when he is hailed by a man supporting a slumped, intoxicated figure and requesting that the cabman take the unfortunate fellow home - before proceeding to drop his burden and make a rapid exit.

Jungle Tales of Tarzan is a collection of 12 loosely connected short stories written by Edgar Rice Burroughs about the title character, Tarzan.

Rita Van Arsdale, a member of the high society in New York, is invited to an elegant party where she falls in love with a gentleman called Mr. Durand, who returns her feelings and proposes to her. But their plans are derailed after Mrs. Fairbrother, who has arrived at the party wearing a spectacular diamond, is discovered murdered in an alcove. The prime suspect is none other than Mr. Durand, so Miss Van Arsdale gets down to work to reconstruct the true course of events and prove that her love is indeed innocent.

A compendium of 100 words and phrases smart people use—even if they only kinda sorta (secretly don't) know what they mean—with pithy definitions and fascinating etymologies to solidify their meanings.

For word nerds and grammar geeks, a witty guide to the most commonly mispronounced words, along with their correct pronunciations and pithy forays into their fascinating etymologies and histories of use and misuse.

Charlie López despliega sus treinta años de experiencia analizando el discurso y nuestro lenguaje cotidiano para desentrañar, de manera didáctica y accesible, el origen y surgimiento de 300 palabras, frases y dichos que usamos todos los días.

A who-done-it mystery from Anna Katharine Green written in 1917 begins immediately with a murder by Native American arrow within a museum. Who is the young girl who is murdered, and why is she alone? No one knows. Who is the woman right next to her? Ms. Green develops her story and characters, and the intrigue builds. Is the murderer a man or woman?

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), a Canadian author, is well known for her work Anne of Green Gables (1908). She is the author of over 500 short stories, poems, and essays. This title offers a sneak peek into some of her work with 22 of her best short stories that range from delightful Christmas tales to heartwarming seaside romance.

Miss Elizabeth Mapp, magnificent grande dame and heiress, is always on the lookout lest her neighbors fall outside the bounds of perfect, exemplary manners. But her tightly controlled world is soon beset on all sides by interlopers, first in the disturbingly masculine form of two very different retired army officers, both of whom are anything but retiring in their conflicting aims upon her heart.

It first surfaced in the gripes of GIs during World War II and was captured early on by the typewriter of a young Norman Mailer. Within a generation it had become a basic notion of our everyday moral life, replacing older reproaches like lout and heel with a single inclusive category. We have conflicting attitudes about the A-word, but considering how much the word does for us, and to us, it hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves - at least until now.

What was Anthony Trollope's favorite Anthony Trollope book? Which was the most difficult for him to write? When he settled down by the fire for a good read, whose books did he choose? What nonliterary profession occupied him for much of his life? Learn the answers to these and other questions as one of the great authors in literature takes you on a guided tour of his personal and literary life.

Stevenson's brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme, the elemental struggle between good and evil, as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottish history.

First published in 1766 and a perennial favorite since then, The Vicar of Wakefield is built around the naïve but loveable figure of Dr Primrose. He and his family live in rural bliss until disaster threatens to destroy their happiness: abduction, impoverishment and betrayal combine to lay them low, but a surprising figure brings hope when all seems lost.

In this, the first of the Palliser parliamentary novels, the plight of women in marriage, politics and private life is seen through the eyes of Alice and Kate Vavisor, Lady Glencora and the coquettish Mrs. Greenow.

Phineas Finn, a handsome young man of 23, comes to England to make his fortune in parliamentary politics. But despite all his aspirations, Finn is haunted by ethical questions as his personal convictions conflict with his duty towards his party. Loyalty versus honor, love versus money, and privacy versus prominence: our eponymous hero faces a variety of dilemmas as he navigates his way through the House of Commons.

In Articulate While Black, two renowned scholars of Black Language address language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of President Barack Obama's language use--and America's response to it. In this eloquently written and powerfully argued book, H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman provide new insights about President Obama and the relationship between language and race in contemporary society.

People do bad things. They misspeak, mislead, and misbehave. They lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Often, afterward, they apologize. But what makes a successful apology? Why does Joe Biden's 2007 apology for referring to Barack Obama as "articulate and bright" succeed, whereas Mel Gibson's 2006 apology for his anti-Semitic tirade fails? Naturally, the effectiveness of an apology depends on the language used, as well as the conditions under which we offer our regrets.

Slang, writes Michael Adams, is poetry on the down low, and sometimes lowdown poetry on the down low, but rarely, if ever, merely lowdown. It is the poetry of everyday speech, the people's poetry, and it deserves attention as language playing on the cusp of art. In Slang: The People's Poetry, Adams covers this perennially interesting subject in a serious but highly engaging way, illuminating the fundamental question "What is Slang" and defending slang - and all forms of nonstandard English - as integral parts of the American language.