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The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us
James W. Pennebaker · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Steven Pinker · 499 pages
New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books—including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate—have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important and popular science writers.Now, in The Stuff of Thought
Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
Douglas R. Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander · 578 pages
Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.
Metaphors We Live By
George Lakoff, Mark Johnson · 259 pages
Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--Metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
Deborah Tannen · 330 pages
Just sit down and read it. Yes, you will want to throw it. You will want to forget it, but that is not possible. It will cross your mind and impact you when you would otherwise just get frustrated. There is one major error, when you read it and reflect on it, forget the gender comments, they are a distraction. Gender is not the answer, see the later book, "That's Not What I Ment" for more unde
What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves
Benjamin K. Bergen · 287 pages
"Smart as hell and funny as fuck, this book explains why we can't stop swearing and what it tells us about our language and brains. Everyone swears. Only the rare individual can avoid ever letting slip an expletive. And yet, we ban the words from television and insist that polite people excise them from their vocabularies. That's a fucking shame. Not only is swearing colorful, fun, and often power
Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
Guy Deutscher · 304 pages
This book confronts the thorny question of how and whether culture shapes language and language, culture. Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaim
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
John McWhorter · 336 pages
How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die
David Crystal · 506 pages
In the author's own words, "How Language Works is not about music, cookery, or sex. But it is about how we talk about music, cookery, and sex—or, indeed, anything at all." Language is so fundamental to everyday life that we take it for granted. But as David Crystal makes clear in this work of unprecedented scope, language is an extremely powerful tool that defines the human species. Crystal offers
Seeing Voices
Oliver Sacks · 186 pages
A neurologist investigates the world of the deaf, examining their past and present treatment at the hands of society, and assesses the value and significance of sign language.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
David Bellos · 304 pages
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind
George Lakoff · 614 pages
Focusing on studies of how humans categorize objects and ideas, this book examines the new understanding of human thought which proposes that human reason is imaginative, metaphorical, and intrinsically linked with the human body.
I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World
James Geary · 296 pages
Geary's adept explication of the metaphor's role in defining perceptions analyzes how metaphors are used in advertising, scientific discoveries, economics, and politics, as well as how metaphors play in conceptual comprehension and long-term memory.
Language and Mind
Noam Chomsky · 194 pages
This is the long-awaited third edition of Chomsky's outstanding collection of essays on language and mind. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This new edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky's influential approach into the twenty-first century. Chapters 1-6 present Choms
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
Maryanne Wolf · 320 pages
In the Book. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Harper Perennial, 2008. This is an account of how our brains change as we learn to read.
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
Mark Forsyth · 373 pages
The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
David M. Buss · 267 pages
How we choose - and lose - our mates has always been a source of fascination. This controversial book is the first to present a unified theory of human mating behavior. The Evolution of Desire is based on the most massive study of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than 10,000 people of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide. If we all want love, why is there so much conflict
Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear
Margee Kerr · 281 pages
"For as long as we've gathered by campfires to tell ghost stories, humans have always loved a good scare. From the splatter flicks of the 70s, to Japan's obsession with drowned girls, to creepy modern experiences like the overnight ghost hunt at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the horror industry has thrived across time and cultures. Our obsession with getting scared is obvious to anyone who v
Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes
Paul Watzlawick, Don D. Jackson, William J. Lederer · 296 pages
Called one of the best books ever about human communication, and a perennial bestseller, Pragmatics of Human Communication has formed the foundation of much contemporary research into interpersonal communication, in addition to laying the groundwork for context-based approaches to psychotherapy. The authors present the simple but radical idea that problems in life often arise from issues of commun
The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else
Daniel Coyle · 246 pages
What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? In this groundbreaking work, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle provides parents, teachers, coaches, businesspeople--and everyone else--with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others.Whether you're coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your gol
Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
Matthew Syed · 312 pages
In this thoughtful, provocative book, a former Olympian persuasively demonstrates how sports offer powerful and often overlooked tools with which to explore fundamental subjects, including biology, morality, globalization, culture, gender, race, and economics.
Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There
Richard Wiseman · 342 pages
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan · 229 pages
From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our intelligence and happiness throughout our lives.We’ve all seen the happiness in the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. An
The Psychopath Whisperer: Inside the Minds of Those Without a Conscience
Kent A. Kiehl · 304 pages