Language: the Social Mirror (Sociolinguistics)

I'm about 100 pages into this book. The content is very interesting and valuable.The writing style is often verbose and in my opinion a bit too casual for a serious book. There is too much repetition, and sometimes too many pages of examples where a paragraph or two would suffice. At times it reads more like a rough draft. Where was the editor for this project?This book also gets major points off because of the terrible binding. Many loose pages are falling out. Unacceptable.

Great book, fast shipping.

Paid nearly 60 bucks for this book for school. It was apparently brand new and yet I have pages falling out of the book. When I pay a pretty penny for a book I’d like it to, oh I don’t know, not fall apart. Ridiculous.

This shares amazing insights on social dynamics. But, you do have to put the time into reading it to get everything out of it!

Great price as compared to my college bookstore. Good quality.

Contains a lot of interesting stuff, but packs too much in with too little supportive detail. Most of it is sociolinguistic info I've read elsewhere, but here it is all in one place. Found it hard to read because the chapters cover so much and are not broken up in a way that makes it easy to scan for information.

As a person who is fascinated by language and the nuances related to our communications - Dr. Chaika's book is a must-read. Her chapters on bilingualism are particularly relevant to today's debate on bilingual education and immigration. She makes an excellent argument as to why we do need a common language to unify our country while stressing the idea that diversity is indeed not only desirable but necessary. One of my favorite aspects of her book are the exercises that she provides at the end of each chapter. As a former teacher, I can absolutely see this text being utilized in any college setting with lots of exciting possibilities.