A very long list of pop linguistics books and lingfic
Looking for pop linguistics books or linguistics-related fiction to read, find in a library, ask for as a gift, or give to a language nerd in your life? Here’s an extensive list of books you might be interested in.
Note that this list focuses on books that are aimed to be read from cover to cover, and does not include academic books, writing/style advice books, or “interesting things about a list of words” books, which typically end up swamping the pop science-y lingcomm books if they’re included.
Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch (my book about internet language, 2019)
Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self by Julie Sedivy, 2021
The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles by Alex Bellos, 2021
Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O’Neill), 2021
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell, 2021
How You Say It: Why We Judge Others by the Way They Talk—and the Costs of This Hidden Bias by Katherine D. Kinzler, 2021
What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron, 2020
Language Unlimited by David Adger, 2019
Don’t Believe A Word by David Shariatmadari, 2019
The 5-Minute Linguist (short, accessible essays by many linguists), 2019
For more detailed thoughts about some of these books and others, or if it’s been a while since this list was updated, Stan Carey also does periodic reviews of linguistics books for a general audience on his blog.
David Crystal has many pop linguistics books, including more recently: the history of English spelling, A Little Book of Language (note that Crystal also writes “interesting facts about words” books, so check the description if this is a relevant factor for you)
John McWhorter has many pop linguistics books, including notably: The Language Hoax, The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, What Language Is, Word on the Street
The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox (about cracking Linear B)
You Are What You Speak by RL Greene
The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher (about the history of language)
How Babies Talk by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
In The Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent (my review)
The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson (my livetweet)
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper, who also has a second book coming out! (my livetweet)
You’re The Only One I Can Tell by Deborah Tannen
The Prodigal Tongue by Lynne Murphy (my livetweet), 2018
Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren
Babel: Around the World in 20 Languages by Gaston Dorren, 2018
Most of these I read in the late 1990s and early 2000s so I can vouch for them being interesting enough when I read them such that they’ve stuck in my mind many years later, but I haven’t re-read them since and can’t vouch for how they’d stack up on re-reading. Just so you know.
Older David Crystal books: How Language Works, The Stories of English
Verbatim (a collection of essays on pop linguistics, edited by Erin McKean - my comments)
Steven Pinker’s pop linguistics books are pretty dated by now but were popular in the 1990s: The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, The Stuff of Thought – for an updated pop linguistics book along similar lines I’d recommend David Adger’s Language Unlimited instead
Talk, Talk, Talk by Jay Ingram
A Mouthful of Air by Anthony Burgess
Alpha Beta by John Man (about the history of the alphabet)
The Articulate Mammal by Jean Aitchison
Deborah Tannen has several older highly readable books on conversation, including You Just Don’t Understand, That’s Not What I Meant!, You’re Wearing That?
Hearing Gesture by Susan Goldin-Meadow
Talking Hands by Margalit Fox (my comments)
The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky
Babel No More by Michael Erard
Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages by Joseph Solodow (my review)
Predicting New Words by Allan Metcalf
Shady Characters by Keith Houston (about punctuation marks - my comments)
Speculative Grammarian’s satirical linguistics book (my review - you should probably already know some linguistics before reading it though)
How We Talk by Nick Enfield (review on Superlinguo)
The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder (conlangs, older)
How to Keep Your Language Alive and Language Revitalization for Families, both by Leanne Hinton (see also Ola!, and my thoughts on it)
The Signs of Language by Bellugi/Klima (a sign language classic, but readable)
Books friendly to younger readers
I’m often asked lately for books that might work for high schoolers, middle schoolers, children, or other younger people interested in linguistics. While this category is still under-populated (hint, hint!), and of course a sufficiently motivated high school student could tackle the full list, here are a few starter suggestions:
An ABC for Baby Linguists (probably more amusing for linguist parents than actual babies)
Frindle by Andrew Clements (middle grade novel)
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (young adult, my comments)
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (young adult, my livetweet)
A Little Book of Language by David Crystal, 2011 (40 short chapters, “written explicity for a young audience” doesn’t explicity specify age but probably middle school to junior high)
The Word Snoop by Ursula Dubosarsky (illustrated by Tohby Riddle), 2009 (Grades 5-9 according to Library Journal)
Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O’Neill), 2021 (short chapters and fun illustrations, not technically aimed at young readers but Okrent/O’Neill also make these whiteboard style youtube videos)
The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles by Alex Bellos, 2021 (adapted from linguistics olympiad problemsets which were originally written for high schoolers, at varying levels of trickiness)
Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch, 2019 (I’m told that chapters from this book get assigned in high schools, especially for activities around students analyzing their own internet language)
Other lists: Superlinguo’s Linguistics Books for Kids list, books, both nonfiction and YA, assigned in a high school linguistics class taught by Amy Plackowski.
Beginner-friendly textbooks
Comprehensive but more friendly than actual textbooks:
Introducing Linguistics: An Illustrated Guide
Actual textbooks, still at an introductory level:
Essentials of Linguistics - free, open access textbook entirely online with text and video
Contemporary Linguistics (the fifth edition is also fine, and cheaper)
iLanguage (previous edition is cheaper)
Describing Morphosyntax is popular among budding conlangers
Fiction that contains a significant linguistic element, enjoyable for both practising linguists and language enthusiasts:
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (my comments)
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (my livetweet)
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (my comments) and Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, both of which do interesting things with language & gender
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (my livetweet)
Eunoia by Christian Bök (my comments). It’s entirely online here.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (review from @superlinguo)
Native Tongue trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin
Pygmalion and My Fair Lady are classics, although real linguists aren’t nearly as keen on “proper” English as Henry Higgins
The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis features a philologist
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Embassytown by China Miéville
The Lord of the Rings books
See also more recommendations on the #lingfic hashtag and this list at conlang.org
Anyone else have pop linguistics books (or #lingfic) to recommend, or reviews to link to? I’ll try to keep this list updated as I hear of and review other books, old and new, so make sure to check out the source post and my books tag if you’re viewing it as a reblog. There are some great additions in the extensive reblogs by Stan Carey and Superlinguo.
Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer (my livetweet)
The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (my two livetweets)
“The Story of Your Life” (short story) by Ted Chiang (the movie based on it is called Arrival and stars a linguist)
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie (my livetweet)
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (my livetweet)
The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey and sequels
Murderbot Diaries (series) by Martha Wells
Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan (midway through a series but makes sense without previous books)
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Lingthusiasm episode discussing books by Burke, Haden Elgin, Milan, Martine and Reading fiction like a linguist discussing some of the older back catalogue
Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein (more in book 2 and especially book 3 but doesn’t make sense without book 1; avoid spoilers for this series)
I also keep a list of linguistically interesting fiction (lingfic) on Goodreads.
annaxmalina
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jacobvanloon
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