Robert Lane Greene
Autor de You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity
Sobre El Autor
Obras de Robert Lane Greene
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- USA
- Lugar de nacimiento
- Johnson City, Tennessee, USA
- Lugares de residencia
- Marietta, Georgia, USA
Brooklyn, New York, USA - Educación
- Tulane University (BA|1997)
University of Oxford (MPhil|European Politics and Society|1999) - Ocupaciones
- journalist
- Organizaciones
- Council on Foreign Relations
The Economist - Biografía breve
- Married to Eva Green, with one son, Jack.
Robert Lane Greene ("Lane") is a journalist based in Berlin. He is a business and finance correspondent for The Economist, and he writes frequently about language for the newspaper and online. His book on the politics of language around the world, You Are What You Speak, was published by Random House in Spring 2011. He contributed a chapter on culture to the Economist book Megachange, and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the New Republic, the Daily Beast and many other publications. He is an outside advisor to Freedom House, and from 2005 to 2009 was an adjunct assistant professor in the Center for Global Affairs at New York University.
Greene was born in Johnson City, Tennessee and grew up in Marietta, Georgia. He graduated with honors from Tulane University in 1997, receiving a B.A. in International Relations and History. On a Marshall Scholarship, he completed an M.Phil. in European Politics and Society at the University of Oxford in 1999. He is fluent in German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Danish, and conversant in Russian, Arabic and Italian. He joined The Economist in 2000, lives in Brooklyn, is married to Eva Høier Greene, and has two sons, Jack and Henry.
http://www.robertlanegreene.com/?page...
Miembros
Reseñas
Great essays about language. They tend to meander a little but usually into interesting areas. I think I liked his previous book better, but they both cover similar ground anyway.
A look at various ways in which people try to control or "tame" language (especially English) by imposing unnatural and artificial rules on it, attempting to stop it from changing, or reducing it to one Only Right Way of speaking, and why such attempts are generally both wrong-headed and useless. Along the way, the author takes some entertaining shots at self-appointed grammar experts who don't actually know what they're talking about, looks at how politicians use language to try to manipulate people (although often not as well as we might fear), explains the difficulties of computer translation, and samples some artificially invented languages, among other things.
There's not actually a whole lot here that was new to me, but Lane is good enough at coming up with interesting examples and vivid, useful metaphors that it still managed to feel fairly fresh. And there's a lot to be said, I think, for the clear and careful way in which he avoids a simplistic blanket condemnation of anyone who smacks of linguistic prescriptivism, but instead takes a nuanced approach, one that has little time for people who make false claims about how language works or unrealistic ones about how it should work while firmly embracing those who offer good, informed advice about formal writing.… (más)
There's not actually a whole lot here that was new to me, but Lane is good enough at coming up with interesting examples and vivid, useful metaphors that it still managed to feel fairly fresh. And there's a lot to be said, I think, for the clear and careful way in which he avoids a simplistic blanket condemnation of anyone who smacks of linguistic prescriptivism, but instead takes a nuanced approach, one that has little time for people who make false claims about how language works or unrealistic ones about how it should work while firmly embracing those who offer good, informed advice about formal writing.… (más)
Seemed to wander at times, but then again the book is based on a very broad premise. I particularly enjoyed the section on linguistic prescriptivism (and moreover, why it's silly and not nearly as logical as a prescriptivist would like to think).
También Puede Gustarte
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 3
- Miembros
- 306
- Popularidad
- #76,934
- Valoración
- 3.6
- Reseñas
- 9
- ISBNs
- 14
I did appreciate the pointers on writing carefully about numbers and statistics (especially the tricky “grew by 100%” and “fivefold”, which often do not mean what the casual reader thinks they mean), and I liked when the guide contained examples of The Economist itself broke its own style guidelines (the letter to the editor about the multiple movie references in headlines was especially good). And there’s a really comprehensive chapter on how to write in English about people from a wide variety of countries. But overall, I didn’t finish reading this, and tone of the book was enough to put me off that I wouldn’t recommend it. Dreyer’s English is funnier and more flexible.… (más)