It was at UM that she earned tenure (in 1981) and became a full professor (in 1984). She has since taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Swarthmore College. in Romance Languages and Literatures in 1973, both from Harvard University, then did a postdoctoral year in Linguistics at MIT. She received her BA in mathematics in 1970 and her Ph.D. She has five children, seven grandchildren, and currently lives outside Philadelphia. For thirteen years she had a cat named Taxi, and liked to go outside and call, 'Taxi!' to make the neighbors wonder. She loves to garden and bake bread, and even dreams of moving to the woods and becoming a naturalist.Īt various times her house and yard have been filled with dogs, cats, birds, and rabbits. Language Matters is sure to engage both general readers and students of language and linguistics at any level.Donna Jo Napoli is both a linguist and a writer of children's and YA fiction. This thoroughly revised second edition updates the book with a new co-author, and includes new chapters on language and power, language extinction, and what it is linguists actually do. Both their questions and their conclusions are surprising, sometimes provocative, and always entertaining. Throughout, Napoli and Lee-Schoenfeld encourage and lead the reader to use common-sense and everyday experience rather than preconceived notions or technical linguistic expertise.

Language Matters provides a highly informative tour of the world of language, examining these and other vexing and controversial language-related questions. Yet as linguists Donna Jo Napoli and Vera Lee-Schoenfeld point out in this short and thoroughly readable volume, many of our most deeply held ideas about the nature of language and its role in our lives are either misconceived or influenced by myths and stereotypes. Most of us have very definite opinions on these questions one way or another. Is Ebonics really a dialect or simply bad English? Do women and men speak differently? Will computers ever really learn human language? Does offensive language harm children? These are only a few of the issues surrounding language that crop up every day.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.

The European Society of Cardiology Series.Oxford Commentaries on International Law.

A Single Pearl by Donna Jo Napoli