ABSTRACT
This introduction covers some key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. In the book, internationally recognized language professionals respond to questions that they have considered in their professional capacity. Language is a powerful tool that helps us think and make sense of the world, that we use to transmit our cultural histories, that we use to entertain, convince, seduce, inform and mislead. Access to knowledge of the appropriate kind is often restricted because people who investigate language most closely (called “linguists”, though the term is unfortunately ambiguous) are trained to write for other linguists and not for the curious and dissatisfied. The book provides answers to a series of questions about language that illustrate just how much language influences all sorts of aspects of everyday life, and just how difficult it is to pin down the nature of language and the way we exploit it.
