I’m going to make this a quick one as the book is so short. As the title reads, it is only an introduction
to the subject of Linguistics so I shall give a concise view from a beginner’s
perspective - as someone who doesn’t know a lot about the subject but has a rapidly
growing interest in it.
The size of this book does not undermine the wonderfulness
of its content! In 132 pages,
Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction gives an excellent insight into the
study of language and covers a range of topics from the history of English, to
the similarities between languages, to how the brain processes them.
The highlights, for me, were the fascinating case studies
that Matthews provided as well as the interesting graphics which both
embellished and illustrated the vastness of knowledge that he demonstrates
throughout the book. Its only downfalls were that, by the end of
the book, I felt that Matthews had lost the focus and direction which he had
established at the beginning. Furthermore,
although this book is only designed to give a ‘Very Short Introduction,’ I
would have liked to have seen further coverage of other topics such as first
and second language acquisition.
Overall, it was a cracker of a book that covered a variety
of topics in a limited number of pages and demonstrated an immensity of
knowledge in an unintimidating and welcoming manner. I only felt that it lacked focus and direction
by the end and could have covered a couple more aspects of linguistics to give
a wider insight into the whole subject. Therefore…
Rating = 4 stars.
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