A Mouthful Of Air: Language And Languages, Especially English

W.B. Yeats wrote of one of his poems that he “made it out of a mouthful of air.” Truly, all language is made this way. Although we tend to think of it as a scratching of signs on paper, the essence of language is primarily so much air, a mouthful at a time, evanescent and yet essential. Speech is language’s primary manifestation; writing and printing are secondary. Arguing from this standpoint, Anthony Burgess presents a fascinating survey of language, how it operates now, how it got to be that way, and how it will develop in the future. Written with grace and brilliance, his book is highly readable and full of riveting information – for instance, on Shakespeare’s pronunciation, on English newly generated abroad, on everyday speech, and on the place of English in the world family of languages. As a novelist whose obsession with language has been central to his work (to the extent, in A Clockwork Orange, of inventing a vocabulary for the teen gangs terrorizing a future England), Burgess has always wished to tackle this subject. This is his most profound and considered statement to date on language, and one of the most important books he has written.