Whys & Therefores: A Rational Look at the English Language

Whys & Therefores aids the reader to arrive at generalizations for the shape of the English language: words, grammar, meaning, sound and spelling. The format adopted throughout is that of a light-hearted ongoing Socratic dialogue between a mentor and a pupil. The intended effects of such activity are: awareness of what it means to ‘know’ a language; reliance upon native-language intuition; discovery of what one didn’t know that one already ‘knows’ about the language; use of ungrammaticality as an investigative tool; healthy questioning of received facts about language from so-called experts; and usefulness of language play. Whys & Therefores can be read as a book, listened to on the accompanying CD, dipped into at random, expanded upon, even acted out. The language phenomena treated therein are indexed and tabbed to the dialogues where they are discussed, making Whys & Therefores a valuable source of reference. Whys & Therefores is intended as an entertaining yet serious do-it-yourself book about aspects of English language form and meaning. However, it will also prove useful to schools as classroom material to be further exploited by the instructor in free-range dialogue form, and to institutions offering teacher training in rational-based instructional procedures for English language education in the schools.