Doing Our Own Thing

Once languages become written, they change. Only in writing does language develop the artfulness and richness that we associate with a Shakespeare, a Proust or a Whitman. Yet over the last forty years, the English-language has effectively gone into reverse - taking our lead from America and the legacy of the 1960s, our culture increasingly privileges the oral over the written, spurning the art of elaborated, 'written'-style language in favour of returning to the state of a spoken culture. Parallel developments have occurred in music. In this controversial and thought-provoking book, John McWhorter argues that the 1960's rejection of cultural traits associated with the Establishment, as well as a democratic celebration of what anyone can do over what requires training or talent, has led to our culture being increasingly impoverished, both intellectually and artistically...

Préface
Is the English language in decline? Is contemporary music a pale imitation of the musical riches of the past? Linguist John McWhorter argues in this provocative, controversial book that the legacy of the 1960's has caused us to value the verbal and the oral over the written forms of language and music, impoverishing our culture.

Auteur

John McWhorter

Texte du rabat

There was a time when American presidents such as Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy exhorted their country to greatness with elevated diction and measured rhetorical technique. But today the hearts and minds of a weary nation are implored by a president whose idea of eloquent phrasing is 'Let's roll'.

John McWhorter argues that the precipitous decline of the English language derives from the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and its insistence that established forms and formality were autocratic and artificial. Warning that the near-total loss of formal expression is unprecedented in modern history, McWhorter suggests that it has reached a crisis point in our culture, in which our very ability to convey ideas and arguments effectively is gravely threatened.

By turns compelling and provocative, passionate and judicious, Doing Our Own Thing is required reading for all concerned about the state of our language.