Language Play: An Introduction to Linguistics by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen (review)

LANGUAGE PLAY: AN INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS BY DON L. F. NILSEN and ALLEEN PACE NILSEN (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1978. Pp. xii, 249.) In verbal play, language is at its most complex, but it is also spontaneous and accessible to observation and analysis. Language Play takes advantage of this paradox to present the study of linguistics. The authors set themselves theambitious task ofsimultaneouslyaddressing several potential audiences: students in mass communications, freshman composition, sociolinguistics, or general semantics. In this respect, the book is of a rare type; in taking as its illustrative examples advertising slogans and copy, it is unique. Moreover, this is a book with a thesis — that contemporary English is becoming more abstract under the influence of the mass media. The pattern for each chapter of Language Play is a preliminary synopsis, presentation, and concluding sections for the organization offollow-up work: observation-collection, analysis, creativity-production. The latter are intriguing , challenging and useful: "Design a system that you could use to teach ten words of human language to a chimpanzee" (p. 17); "Ifyou were appointed to a group charged with the task ofgiving guidance to language development in the U.S., what is one suggestion you would make?" (p. 27). All the major topics of linguistics are introduced in this work, but without the welter ofterminology which beginning students so oftenfind intimidating. Some linguists might object that this has been carried to a fault; the term phoneme, for example, appears in the index but not in the text where "distinctive sounds" are discussed. This book is written in a straightforward style and with infectious enthusiasm . (So imbued was this reviewer with the spirit of language play, that he read a section-heading titled In Medias Res as In Media's Race.) This enthusiasm results in some exaggeration of the book's thesis: "Some ofthe greatest language play in the history of the world took place in the early years of the U.S." (p. 217). Happily, such overstatement does not at all detract from the value of the work. The Nilsens, who taught English as a foreign language in Afghanistan for two years, now teach at the Arizona State University. Their book is unmistakably the product of much creative teaching. W. TERRENCE GORDON* *W. TERRENCE GORDON is an Assistant Professor in the Department ofFrenchatDalhousie University in Halifax, N. S., Canada. VOL. 34. NO. 1 (WINTER U ...