Advanced Grammar: A Manual for Students. (Chapter 1) Dorothy Disterheft.

Disterheft, Dorothy. Advanced Grammar: A Manual for Students. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study of Grammar

Step one in books on this topic is pretty much always to identify exactly what the writer is even talking about in the first place, as “grammar” has meant somewhat different things at different times. In what Disterheft refers to as the “traditional” sense, grammar is “specifically the rules that govern sentence structure (syntax) and the forms of words that appear in any given construction (morphology)” (3). However, in this book, she (like most present-day linguists) uses the word “grammar” more liberally to mean “the system of rules that every speaker formulates through the process of first language acquisition” (3), and therefore the book deals with phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon.

The End of Policing. Alex S. Vitale.

Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. Verso, 2017.

I give this book three out of five stars because… well, partly it’s a preaching-to-the-choir situation, where I don’t think those who don’t already agree with his viewpoint will be terribly convinced by his approach, and partly I found that it didn’t offer much additional information or ideas about what to do next.

I read books about social issues largely for two reasons: One, I want more information about those issues, whether it’s about their history or how they affect people or how they’ve played out in court or WHATEVER… just more info. Regardless of where I stand on the issue when I begin reading, I’m looking for additional credible facts and analysis. Two, I want ideas about what I can do next, beyond reading the book.