Language Report Books in Order

Dent surveys early twenty-first-century English, tracking new words, revived expressions and changing habits of speech and writing. Politics, popular culture, the internet and debates over usage provide evidence of how language responds to the events and preoccupations of its speakers.

Focusing on English in 2004, Dent examines how slang, technology, music, politics and the media reshape everyday vocabulary. New coinages, euphemisms and memorable quotations reveal the connections between social change and the language people use to describe it.

Dent explores changes in English through new vocabulary, word histories, dialect and debates about spelling and grammar. Drawing on dictionary research, she examines language from technology, politics and entertainment, alongside a sequence of words associated with the century ending in 2005.

Dent surveys changes in English during the early twenty-first century, from punctuation and political jargon to food, advertising and celebrity culture. This fifth annual report places recent developments beside longer historical shifts and considers where the language might go next.