New books mean a new book spine poem, aka bookmash. This one has a language theme.
[Click to enlarge]
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Broken words
Broken words spoken here:
Swearing, texting,
The unfolding of language,
Native tongue lapsing
Into a comma –
You just don’t understand.
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Thanks to the authors: Helen Hodgman, Mark Abley, Geoffrey Hughes, David Crystal, Guy Deutscher, Suzette H. Elgin, Bill Walsh, and Deborah Tannen; and to artist Nina Katchadourian.
Tannen’s book featured in a post here in June on gender differences in listening signals, while long-time readers will have seen another Guy Deutscher work, Through the Language Glass, in my earlier bookmash ‘Forest of Symbols’. Elgin’s feminist ling-sci-fi Native Tongue is the one I read most recently; I haven’t yet got to the first three in the stack.
Older book spine poems are here. Feel free, as always, to join in.
Sentence first 
Love this.
Thanks, Kim.
[…] reading “Broken Words Spoken Here” as presented over at Sentence First, I had to try my hand at stacking up my own book-spine poem. A book-spine poem being what it […]
Awesome!
Thank you!
Great! Some lovely books there as well. I must read The Unfolding of Language again. It’s wonderful!
Thanks, Debunker! Yes, Unfolding is a terrific book, one I hope to revisit too.
Wait… whaaaaaat? This is genius!
Nah. But it is a lot of fun. :-)
[…] [P.S. Hughes’s book appeared in a book spine poem here last year: ‘Broken words spoken here‘.] […]
[…] Abley’s book was in a previous bookmash on language, Broken Words; others are The Accidental Grammar, Unlocking the Language, The Name of the World […]
[…] of these books and authors have featured before. You can browse the full archive of book spine poems, which also […]
[…] Sentence first a few times. Deborah Tannen has also appeared here before, including in an earlier book spine poem about […]