Books on language have been immensely popular in recent years. Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne (1999) was a study of the relationship between James Murray, the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the insane citation collector Dr Minor. Winchester followed this with The Meaning of Everything (2003), a history of the Oxford English Dictionary project. In Australia, the reception of Don Watson’s Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (2003) and of Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words (2004) demonstrated the general reading public’s interest in language matters.
A Word On Words by Pam Peters
CAE Press, $19.80 pb, 90 pp
Away With Words: A frolic through the landscape of language by Ruth Wajnryb
ABC Books, $27.95 pb, 328 pp
Language Most Foul by Ruth Wajnryb
Allen & Unwin, $29.95 hb, 230 pp
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