Reviewed by: Tiffany Markman
Source: Books & Leisure magazine
Author: Susie Dent
ISBN 13: 9780199207664

If you’re a fan of Lynne Truss, Strunk and White and other famed protagonists of good, clean and correct English, Susie Dent’s ‘The like, Language Report innit’ is for you. It’s Dent’s fourth annual update and, in addition to providing fascinating and well-written insights into the latest developments in the English language, it offers a peek into linguistic worlds I’d never even dreamed about: the poker table, the macabre arena of medicine and disease, the colourful cartoon industry, the shady criminal underworld, and other platforms.

What’s more, in this delightful little volume, you’ll find glorious tidbits to describe aspects of yourself. For instance, it turns out that I am an ‘alterpreneur’ (someone who places more importance on quality of life than on profit-making) with a distinct aversion to ‘body spam’ (undesirable physical contact by strangers), but nevertheless likely to produce ‘crotchfruit’ (children) at some point, to whom I will be a ‘helicopter mom’ (a mother who micro-manages her children’s lives and hovers over every stage of their development_ - despite suffering occasionally from ‘infonesia’ (an inability to remember the source of a particular piece of information).

Neatly structured into charming chapters including ‘Buzz in the Boardroom: The New Business Speak’, ‘Blurbing and Blahing: Book Covers Past and Present’, ‘Lame Ducks and Dying Swans: Political Talk’ and ‘Linguistic Relish: The Lexicon of Food and Drink’, among others, the Language Report has something interesting to offer everyone. Bottom line: it’s a phat, wicked and funktastic infofest of killer time-sensitive slang (translation: an innovative and interesting presentation of the latest in language and dialect) – and a superb gift idea.

Link to online catalogue
The Language Report