Notes - Describes the conflict between descriptive and prescriptive; contains photograph of the world's largest book. I need to examine this.

I've made a bit of an exception with my review of this book. Normally, I read the book cover to cover before writing my review. But, in this case, we have a 472 large pages packed with information. It is really a reference book and one can dip into it at any point and learn something fascinating. I must say that I was fascinated as I skimmed my way through. The scope of language is vast...though the author freely admits his field is linguistics and there are whole fields of language such as the philosophy of language where he is not expert. He covers a vast range of topics under 11 main headings which are:
1. Popular ideas about language
2. Language and identity..such as geographic or social identity.
3. The structure of language ...including statistical analysis of language and grammar.
4.The medium of language: speaking and listening
5. The medium of language: writing and reading
6. The medium of language: signing and seeing
7. Child language acquisition
8. Language, brain and handicap (such as deafness).
9. Languages of the world
10. Language in the world (eg translation, world languages such as Esperanto).
11. Language and communication (including chimpanzee communication).
There is a wealth of detail here, Tables, charts, maps and little information boxes. It really is a fascinating book. I certainly intend to come back to it and delve into it more systematically than I have to date.
Oh, the version that I have is somewhat dated ..and is really a version from 1987...though reprinted in 1992. I'm sure that the field of linguistics has moved on a long way from there ...though I also suspect that the substance of the book will still be sound. I did notice the technology (computers etc) were, of course, very dated.
nevertheless I give it 5 stars. ( )

An indispensable resource for anyone studying, or interested in, language ( )

Crystal is smart, his talents bend toward the encyclopedic (fox not hedgehog), and there is lots of good information in here and I'm glad I read through it to get a bit of basic grounding in all the far-flung corners of language study as I became by surprise a full-time editor in the field of linguistics (what, who, huh me? I was gonna be a speech pathologist/lexicographer/civil servant/journalist/teacher/diplomat/English prof! Life is a slow foreclosure, I suppose). But I can't help but wonder a bit, who else other than people looking to get a basic all-around grounding in language fields is this book good for? Anything it can do, Wikipedia can do better. I guess old habits, like the making of encyclopedias, die hard; I guess they are being slowly foreclosed on too. Mutatis mutandis! ( )

Wonderful book, open it at any page and there's something of interest. I hope someone will buy me the 3rd edition!! ( )