Words like "spacesuit," "blast off" and "robot" weren't born in science -- but in science fiction. To learn more, we called Jeff Prucher, the editor of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, a rich and fascinating compendium of words invented and popularized by the genre. We spoke to him about science fiction's impact on English: Continue reading...

Jeff Prucher, the science fiction dictionary editor we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these books on the intersection of language and science fiction:

Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy by Gary K. Wolfe

Science Fiction Quotations by Gary Westfahl

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams ("A landmark in the study of the language of the fantastic.")

Jeff Prucher, the science fiction dictionary editor we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these websites:

Tenser, Said the Tensor "frequently touches on the subject of language and science fiction."

Suzette Hayden Elgin's The Linguistics and Science Fiction Newsletter

The Oxford English Dictionary's Science Fiction Citation Project

"How do I get my word in the dictionary?" This is a question that lexicographers in the Lounge and elsewhere are asked more often than you might expect. While it might be unkind to characterize the sort of person who asks the question, we hope it will be instructive to describe how new words actually make their way into dictionaries. That, in turn, should reveal why there are probably many better things to do in life than getting one's word in the dictionary. By doing some of them, you might get your word in anyway. Continue reading...

Margalit Fox, the author of Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind and the subject of last week's fascinating Behind The Dictionary interview, suggests these books on the linguistics of sign language:

The Signs of Language by Edward S. Klima and Ursula Bellugi

Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf by Oliver Sacks

The Resilience of Language: What Gesture Creation in Deaf Children Can Tell Us About How All Children Learn Language by Susan Goldin-Meadow

An offhand comment by a former professor tipped off New York Times reporter Margalit Fox to a remarkable linguistic quest: A group of researchers studying, firsthand, the birth of a language. The birth of a language? These scientists had been working secretly in a Bedouin village in the Israeli desert that, because of an unusually high population of deaf residents, had spontaneously created its own sign language, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. What their experience teaches us about all languages, signed and spoken, is the subject of Margalit's amazing new book, Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind, and our conversation: Continue reading...

The terrific Oxford University Press blog recommends a bunch of other terrific blogs about language. Here are a few of our favorites:

Read Steady Book

fade theory

The Elegant Variation

Beatrice