Description
Linguistic Society of America (Waverly Press), Published 1942. Wraps, 16 pp; 26 cm; (Special Publications of the Linguistic Society of America).
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
17
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Condition & notes
In Good condition. Tan printed paper wraps lettered in black on the front cover; light bumping and creasing to the covers, mild to moderate shelf wear overall, a stain to the top corner of the front cover near the spine, and some mild spotting to the back cover. Binding tight, staple bound; pages mildly toned, otherwise unmarked. A short pamphlet by Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949), the leading American linguist of his generation, issued as one of the Special Publications of the Linguistic Society of America under the editorship of Bernard Bloch. Written as the United States entered the Second World War and the armed forces and universities scrambled to teach soldiers and students unfamiliar languages, the sixteen-page guide distills Bloomfield's method for learning a language directly from a native speaker: start with a clean slate, imitate the native sounds, learn words and constructions as the speaker actually uses them, and practise until the language becomes second nature. It is a companion to Bloch and Trager's Outline of Linguistic Analysis in the same series and a foundational document of the wartime intensive-language movement (the Army Specialized Training Program) that reshaped American language teaching. It closes with Bloomfield's often-quoted dictum that a language is what its speakers do, not what someone thinks they ought to do.