Full Reference List: Non-Dictionary Language-Related Books

Barnhart, David K., and Metcalf, Alan A. America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Scholarly but highly readable.

Bauer, Laurie, and Trudgill, Peter. Language Myths. London and New York: Penguin, 1998. A fundamental work for the beginning language scholar: dispels and explodes many long-held but inaccurate beliefs about language.

Bolton, Kingsley. Chinese Englishes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson. London: Everyman’s Library, 1992. Orig. published 1791. Long but rewarding if read in digestible chunks.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English, 2 ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A comprehensive, illustrated, and highly readable reference work about all aspects of language.

Görlach, Manfred. English In Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Green, Jonathon. Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made. London: Jonathan Cape, 1996. This work is so insiderish and covers so much territory that only those readers who are truly fanatical about dictionaries will appreciate it.

Hargraves, Orion. Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. A look at the differences between American and British Englishes.

Holder, R.W. How Not To Say What You Mean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. A dictionary of euphemisms.

Hughes, Geoffrey. An Encyclopedia of Swearing. Armonk, New York, and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2006. Scholarly, historical, and explanatory, not prurient, puerile, or inane.

MacNeil, Robert and Cran, William. Do You Speak American? New York: Doubleday, 2005. A companion to the PBS Series about the varieties of American English.

Manessy, Gabriel. Le français en Afrique noire. Paris: Harmattan, 1994. The French language as it is spoken in Africa.

McArthur, Tom. Oxford Guide to World English. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

McMorris, Jenny. The Warden of English: The Life of H.W. Fowler. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Mencken, H.L. 1948. The American Language. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Landmark work. The final edition of this work is most recommended. It includes the main volume and two supplements. Raven McDavid did a one-volume abridgement in 1963, mainly by leaving out many of the word lists.

Metcalf, Allan. Predicting New Words. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Highly recommended.

Murray, K.M. Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977.

Nunberg, Geoffrey. Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times. New York: PublicMedia, 2004. Some of the best essays around on modern language, by the Stanford linguistics professor and NPR commentator.

Ooi, Vincent B.Y., ed. Evolving Identities: The English Language In Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 2001.

Quinion, Michael. Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2004. More etymological myth-busting from the creator of www.worldwidewords.org

Read, Allen Walker. Milestones in the History of English in America. Publication of the American Dialect Society Duke University Press, 2002. This volume includes the original journal articles that once and for all resolve the question of the origin of "OK."

Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. New York: Rayo of HarperColliins, 2003. Not very scholarly but the best dictionary of such language so far.

Tongue, R.K. The English of Singapore and Malaysia. 2 ed. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1979.

Wex, Michael. Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods. New York: St. Martin’s Press: 2005. Chewy, often hilarious, observations on Yiddish and Jewish culture from a Canadian translator of Yiddish.

Wilton, David. Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. With the Bauer/Trudgill book above, this work is highly recommended as a way of answering questions about word origins that are frequently asked and often wrongly answered.