Valerie Fridland, Like, Literally, Dude

Join us Saturday, May 6th at 2pm for a reading of author Valerie Fridlands new book, Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.

Linguist Valerie Fridland's new book is a lively linguistic exploration of the speech habits we love to hate-and why our "like"s and "literally"s actually make us better communicators. Fridland shows how we can re-imagine these forms as exciting new linguistic frontiers rather than our culture's impending demise. With delightful irreverence and expertise built over two decades of research, Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow. She teaches us that language is both function and fashion, and that though we often blame the young, the female, and the uneducated for its downfall, we should actually thank them for their linguistic ingenuity.

By exploring the dark corners every English teacher has taught us to avoid, Like, Literally, Dude redeems our most pilloried linguistic quirks, arguing that they are fundamental to our social, professional, and romantic success--perhaps even more so than our clothing or our resumes. It explains how filled pauses benefit both speakers and listeners; how the use of "dude" can help people bond across social divides; why we're always trying to make our intensifiers ever more intense; as well as many other language tics, habits, and developments.

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. She writes a popular language blog on Psychology Today called "Language in the Wild", and is also a professor for The Great Courses series.