How Does Language Work? by Arlene Larson and Carolyn Logan (review)

70ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW significant book not only in the epistemology of the science of metaphor, but in the epistemology of human thought and human belief systems. It has that in common with the Bible. *I would like to thank Frank Carrasco, a graduate student at Arizona State University, for certain insights we gained mutually in discussing the Lakoff and Johnson book as it related to his thesis on political metaphors. DON L. F. NILSEN, Arizona State University Arlene Larson, and Carolyn Logan. How Does Language Work? Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1980. 19Op. The authors believe that the proper subject for study in composition courses is language, and so they have organized this freshman composition reader around the relationships between language and behavior, thought, and habits. The authors have written about one-fourth of the text which includes twenty-four reprinted essays for reading, discussions of language and questions to guide a continuation of these discussions in class, and suggested topics for writing assignments. It was hard for me to find positive comments to make. In fairness, I should state that because I am a feminist who takes seriously the issue of sex-fair language I was put off by the contents page which features Bacon's statement, "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; writing an exact man." Boldface headings over the exercises in each chapter emphasize the desired goal for each student to develop into "a ready man," "a full man," and "an exact man." Throughout the text, the authors used nearly all masculine pronouns unless there was some stereotyped reason to think that it is a woman who is being referred to, for example, in a discussion of a pretentious speaker. The sexism would not have stood out so much if the authors hadn't chosen to include Casey Miller and Kate Swift's "One Small Step for Genkind," as one of the readings. Even in the discussion of this essay on sexism in language, the authors talked about how each writer wants to convince "his audience that his ideas are correct." No one should condemn an entire book for what is a relatively minor point, but there are other flaws: careless errors in capitalization, verb tense, pronoun usage, and proofreading distract as do references made to items that have apparently been deleted. The tone in the beginning is almost condescending. It reminded me of the tone that creeps into remedial reading textbooks compared to literature texts. The first readings are short, almost anecdotal. I thought that perhaps this was a simplified version of a freshman comp text, but after the first chapter or two, thestandard essays by the standard authors appear (Jonathan Swift, George Orwell, H. L. Mencken, E. B. White, Paul Gallico, Julian Huxley, etc.). Surely remedial students couldn't have progressed that fast. The physical design of the book needs improvement. Facing pages are not set up to have matching bottom margins, and there are some very unappealing pages of just straight type. Headings and sub-headings would improve the design and also help students follow the points that the authors are making. At the ends of the chapters, there are enough questions for discussion that the teacher can pick and choose. Examples are well chosen to support some of the points the authors make about word choice and processes of language change. Whether or not this kind ofinformation really helps students become better writers has not been BOOK REVIEWS71 proven, but it is interesting. One of the best things about the book is that it is not formidable. It could easily be read and studied in a semester. ALLEEN PACE NILSEN, Arizona State University Fred Miller Robinson. The Comedy of Language: Studies in Modern Comic Literature . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. 189 p. Robinson establishes two goals for his book: to contribute to the general theory of comedy and to apply the theory to the comedies of language which he feels are the quintessence of the modern comic vision. He begins his argument by describing the limitations of social theories of comedy to adequately interpret many twentiethcentury comic works. He argues, for example, that Bergson's theory of comedy, which holds that...