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Slam Dunks and No-Brainers
Leslie Savan
A marvelously original and informative book about the ever-changing American language that offers surprising insights into why we talk the way we talk.
Knopf
October 2005
352 pages ISBN: 0375402470 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
With dazzling wit and acuity, three-time Pulitzer Prize
finalist Leslie Savan dissects contemporary language to
discover what our most popular idioms reveal about America
today. She traces the paths that words and expressions
travel from obscurity to ubiquity. She describes how “real
people” create slang and colorful phrases (I don’t think
so; Bring it on!; Dude; Outside the box); how the media,
advertising, politics, and business mine the language for
these phrases in order to better sell products, ideas, and
personalities; and how these expressions, now that they’ve
hit the big time, then burst out of our mouths
as “celebrity words,” newly glamorous and persuasive. Words like Duh! and Whatever have become such an
indispensable form of communication that they’re replacing
our need to articulate any real thought. Whether it’s
George Tenet convincing George W. Bush that finding WMD in
Iraq would be “a slam dunk” or Microsoft telling you that
its latest software is a “no-brainer,” this bright, snappy
language affects us all–up close and personal. Smart, dynamic, and great fun, Slam Dunks and No-Brainers
is–for everyone who loves the mysteries and idiosyncrasies
of language–well, a no-brainer.
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