It's Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Cliches by Orin Hargraves

Careful writers and speakers agree that clichés are generally to be avoided. However, nearly all of us continue to use them. Why do they persist in our language?

Concise and lively, It's Been Said Before serves as a guide to the most overused phrases in the English language -- and to phrases that are used exactly as often as they should be.

Slang, writes Michael Adams, is poetry on the down low, and sometimes lowdown poetry on the down low, but rarely, if ever, merely lowdown. It is the poetry of everyday speech, the people's poetry, and it deserves attention as language playing on the cusp of art. In Slang: The People's Poetry, Adams covers this perennially interesting subject in a serious but highly engaging way, illuminating the fundamental question "What is Slang" and defending slang--and all forms of nonstandard English--as integral parts of the American language. Why is an expression like "bed head" lost in a lexical limbo, found neither in slang nor standard dictionaries?

The Cultural Memory of Language looks at unintended monolingualism - a lack of language fluency in a migratory cultural situation where two or more languages exist at 'home'. It explores family history and childhood language acquisition and attrition. What is the present everday experience of language use and life between two cultures? Examining interview data, Samata uncovers a sense of inauthenticity felt by people who do not fully share a parent's first language. Alongside this features a sense of concurrent anger, and a need to assign blame.

In Articulate While Black, two renowned scholars of Black Language address language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of President Barack Obama's language use--and America's response to it. In this eloquently written and powerfully argued book, H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman provide new insights about President Obama and the relationship between language and race in contemporary society. Throughout, they analyze several racially loaded, cultural-linguistic controversies involving the President--from his use of Black Language and his "articulateness" to his "Race Speech," the so-called "fist-bump," and his relationship to Hip Hop Culture.

Succeed in KET (for Schools) - 6 Practice Tests The test proves you can cope with spoken and written English at a basic level. It covers all four language skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking. The language used in the test comes from real-life situations. It will help you learn the English you need for study and work situations as well as travel. Cambridge KET (Key English Test) is a valuable qualification since universities and employers all over the world recognise Cambridge ESOL exams.