Language is the medium in which we humans compose our thoughts, explain our thinking, construct our arguments, and create works of literature. Without language, societies as complex as ours could not exist.

In this new edition of his widely acclaimed book, Geoffrey Pullum offers a stimulating account of the many ways in which the study of linguistics matters. With its close relationships to psychology, education, philosophy, and computer science, the subject has a compelling human story to tell about the ways in which different societies see and describe the world.

Now updated to include discussion of the outsized impact of rapidly accelerating current events, including large language models, Pullum reveals how linguistics' far-reaching applications (from law to medicine and from developmental psychology to artificial intelligence) are more pertinent than ever.

Geoffrey K. Pullum is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.