YOU ARE WHAT YOU SPEAK

In INSUBORDINATE CLAUSES, Robert Lane Greene goes to the core of how language really works, and what our misunderstandings about language say about us.

. He challenges the myths we propagate and investigates the arbitrary regulations dictated by those who would like to see us talk "this" way. Some books have discussed the basics of linguistics or the language of politics, but INSUBORDINATE CLAUSES is about the politics of language. Greene shows how easily we are manipulated, both from the outside and by our own, homegrown superciliousness. Sociolinguistics a little known but deeply informative subgroup of linguistics teaches us that we all have much more in common with each other than we think, that most languages around the globe are thriving, not dying, and that governments and pundits need to learn to stop trying to teach us to "talk this way." A fun, smart, informative romp through everything you thought you knew about language, INSUBORDINATE CLAUSES is to linguistics what God is Not Great is to religion: irreverent, controversial, and very, very necessary. Robert Lane Greene is a journalist based in New York. He is an international correspondent for The Economist, writing daily news and analysis articles. He is also a frequent television and radio commentator on international affairs, and an adjunct assistant professor at New York University. Greene has lived, studied, and worked in Germany, Britain, Uruguay, and Brazil and traveled to 35 countries on five continents. He is fluent in German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and conversant in Russian, Arabic, Danish and Italian. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Slate and the New Republic, among others. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a consultant and analyst for Freedom House, which monitors political and civil liberties around the world. Greene is a graduate of Tulane University and Oxford University, lives in Brooklyn, and is married with one son.