Summary Of Speaking American
Speaking American, A history of language in the United States by Richard W. Bailey is exactly what it sounds like. It is a one hundred eighty-two page long book about how the American language, my language, has developed over the years alongside its complex and astounding country.
When first delving into the book, I was hopeful. I have always loved learning about how linguistics have changed over the years, and while I will always mourn the loss of calling people a “cool cat” without being looked at weird, I have never been particularly adverse to learning about how our environment and social conventions can shape the way we communicate. So it is with no surprise that when the book finally came in the mail, I sat outside in the suffocating …show more content…
More often than not five pages had gone by before realizing that I had not retained any of the information that I had just read. Speaking American was one of the hardest books I have tried to read in my life. Not because of the style it was written in or the word choice, no, not at all, but simply because there was no sense of pacing, and after a certain point, the themes of the novel got so repetitive, that there was nothing to encourage me to read further beyond the first two chapters. I will say this: Richard W. Bailey has written one of the most well researched non-fiction books I have ever encountered. Every three sentences had another source sited, but I think that might have been his downfall. So many different ideas and new bits of evidence were packed into each page; the difficulty of keeping up with the subject changes had my interest waning. When every paragraph has a new topic, somewhat unrelated to the last, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to stay engaged in what is being read. There was nothing to hold onto, every interesting history story was limited to a page and a half at most, and then was never brought up again. The only overarching theme of the book was that people came to America and their language assimilated into ours. However, after learning about three groups of people going through this process, any other group that does the same thing becomes old news. When slaves from Africa are coming over, I know exactly what will happen as a result, and while this is more of a fault in the subject itself that the author’s inability to create suspense, any interesting story that could be used to leave readers engrossed in the narrative was dropped before any climax or elaboration could happen. It left me feeling dissatisfied on
When first delving into the book, I was hopeful. I have always loved learning about how linguistics have changed over the years, and while I will always mourn the loss of calling people a “cool cat” without being looked at weird, I have never been particularly adverse to learning about how our environment and social conventions can shape the way we communicate. So it is with no surprise that when the book finally came in the mail, I sat outside in the suffocating …show more content…
More often than not five pages had gone by before realizing that I had not retained any of the information that I had just read. Speaking American was one of the hardest books I have tried to read in my life. Not because of the style it was written in or the word choice, no, not at all, but simply because there was no sense of pacing, and after a certain point, the themes of the novel got so repetitive, that there was nothing to encourage me to read further beyond the first two chapters. I will say this: Richard W. Bailey has written one of the most well researched non-fiction books I have ever encountered. Every three sentences had another source sited, but I think that might have been his downfall. So many different ideas and new bits of evidence were packed into each page; the difficulty of keeping up with the subject changes had my interest waning. When every paragraph has a new topic, somewhat unrelated to the last, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to stay engaged in what is being read. There was nothing to hold onto, every interesting history story was limited to a page and a half at most, and then was never brought up again. The only overarching theme of the book was that people came to America and their language assimilated into ours. However, after learning about three groups of people going through this process, any other group that does the same thing becomes old news. When slaves from Africa are coming over, I know exactly what will happen as a result, and while this is more of a fault in the subject itself that the author’s inability to create suspense, any interesting story that could be used to leave readers engrossed in the narrative was dropped before any climax or elaboration could happen. It left me feeling dissatisfied on