Author Description

<p>Why do we have different accents and where do they come from? Why do you say 'tomayto' and I say 'tomahto'? And is one way of speaking better than another?</p> <p>In You're All Talk, linguist Rob Drummond explores the enormous diversity in our spoken language to reveal extraordinary insights into how humans operate: how we perceive (and judge) other people and how we would like ourselves to be perceived. He investigates how and why we automatically associate different accents with particular social characteristics -- degrees of friendliness, authority, social class, level of education, race, and so on -- and how we, consciously or subconsciously, change the way we speak in order to create different versions of ourselves to fit different environments.</p> <p>Ultimately, You're All Talkdemonstrates the beauty of linguistic diversity and how embracing it can give us a better understanding of other people -- and ourselves.</p>