Language Play

by David Crystal

In this exhilarating and often hilarious book, David Crystal examines why we devote so much time and energy to language games, how professionals make a career of them, and how young children instinctively take to them. Crystal makes a simple argument-that since playing with language is so natural, a natural way to learn language is to play with it-while he discusses puns, crosswords, lipograms, comic alphabets, rhymes, funny voices taken from dialect and popular culture, limericks, anagrams, scat singing, and much more.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

David Crystal works from his home in Holyhead, North Wales, as a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster. Born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1941, he spent his early years in Holyhead. His family moved to Liverpool in 1951, and he received his secondary schooling at St Mary's College. He read English at University College London (1959-62), specialised in English language studies, did some research there at the Survey of English Usage under Randolph Quirk (1962-3), then joined academic life as a lecturer in linguistics, first at Bangor, then at Reading. He published the first of his 100 or so books in 1964, and became known chiefly for his research work in English language studies, in such fields as intonation and stylistics, and in the application of linguistics to religious, educational and clinical contexts, notably in the development of a range of linguistic profiling techniques for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. He held a chair at the University of Reading for 10 years, and is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. These days he divides his time between work on language and work on internet applications.

source: http://www.davidcrystal.com/

Reviews

[iago-go · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read even if it was just to chuckle with the different kids of jokes presented. I like the organisation of language play into different chapters. Overall a fun read but reading it once is probably enough.

[Vincent Konrad · Rating 1 out of 5]

The whole book is utterly devoid of information. He keeps saying there hasn’t been much writing about language play and how language play is in all of our lives but that seems to be his sole point.

[Scarlett Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books about language and this was a good non-technical but scholarly look specifically at, as the title says, language play. It was quite a fascinating read and the author did some interesting things with format, like when he was talking about lipograms, he wrote a paragraph without the letter e. He also had a section on language play with children which was really interesting. I actually got some ideas of stuff to do with the students. The author is British, so there are a lot of examples that are specific to England but if it's something an American really wouldn't understand it's usually explained in the notes. I didn't have any trouble with it. There is a pretty good notes, section, but I wish there was a more straightforward bibliography. Still, it's a quick and fascinating read if you like language.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable survey of 'ludic' play, that is playing with words, something that children do from a very early age and are encouraged to do, and that adults do continually throughout their lives, often without thinking about. Crystal keeps his tone light, has hundreds of examples of different kinds of wordplay, and only towards the end gets a little serious in his discussion of why, when children are at school, wordplay is discouraged to a degree in educational materials. Although when the book was written this was changing, and has probably changed further since.
If you love anything to do with words you'll enjoy this.

[Lilí Lanz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book to read. This book talks about different kind of language games. If you're looking for something more scientific though, this book won't do.

[severyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A little trite.