| A Civil Tongue is an amusing book on language by former NBC News correspondent Edwin Newman, the sequel to his Strictly Speaking. Here, Newman deals with the ridiculous and irresponsible use of English. Newman is not against the evolution of English, nor is he a proponent of Standard English for its own sake. Rather, his gripe is with those who know better and still use it incorrectly. Those who use unnecessarily big words to either hide the meaning of what they re saying (politicians) or to make themselves sound important (educators) are some of Newman s targets. He also goes after sportscasters, advertisers, and most anyone else speaking or writing with any kind of double-speak, redundancy, obfuscation, misuse of words, or fabrication of words. He makes some predictions about where English will go, and some of these have come to pass. Newman is happy to acknowledge his own language mistakes, including the ones he made in Strictly Speaking. On the whole, Newman s tone is good-natured rather than patronizing. This is clearly a subject that he cares about, but it is, to some degree, all in good fun. Strictly Speaking is a humorous book. Newman makes puns and jokes about many of the anecdotes he tells. This is quite often amusing, but can become tiresome. Because of this and the structure of the book (almost 300 pages of anecdotes arranged thematically with little real continuity), it is best consumed in strong doses. Those who love English and the self-appointed grammar police will enjoy it. |
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