"Jewel of a book. . . . a gift to us all from Michael Shapiro. Like a Medieval Chapbook it can be a kind of companion whose vignettes on language use can be randomly and profitably consulted at any moment. Some may consider these vignettes opinionated. That would be to ignore how deeply anchored each vignette is in Shapiro's long and rare polyglot experience with language. It could well serve as a night table book, taken up each night to read and reflect upon --to ponder--both in the twilight mind and in the deeper reaches of associative somnolence. There is nothing else like it that I know of." James W. Fernandez, The University of Chicago

Michael Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Semiotic Studies at Brown University, was born in 1939 in Yokohama (Japan) and grew up speaking Russian, Japanese, and English. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1952 and was educated in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. His career as a teacher and scholar spans over half a century. He has taught at several universities, including the University of California (Los Angeles and Berkeley) and Princeton, and served as president of the Charles S. Peirce Society in 1991. He is the co-author, with his late wife the medievalist and Renaissance scholar Marianne Shapiro, of Figuration in Verbal Art (1988) and The Sense of Form in Literature and Language (2nd ed., 2009).

Preface.- Acknowledgments.- About the Author.- Preface to the First Edition.- The Physiognomy of Speech.- Chapter One: Sounds.- Chapter Two: Meanings.- Chapter Three: Style.- Chapter Four: Syntax.- Chapter Five: Theory.- Chapter Six: Poetics.- Chapter Seven: The Psycholinguistic Pathos of Everyday Life.- Epilegomenon.- Master Glossary.- Index