I forget where I saw a reference to this one recently, but as soon as I read about it, I ordered it, as it seemed very aligned with my interests. It was a bit of a disappointment, operating neither as proper academic essay nor as fully successful pop-history or pop-linguistics. Sometimes I felt like the author was giving me too much info and other times not nearly enough, and his style seemed inconsistent. It just didn't feel to me like a final, well-made thing. It's fine, but it's not one I'd recommend. ( )

This wasn't as entertaining as I'd hoped. Many of the chapters went on crazy tangents that never related back to the main point. Not adorable tangents like Bill Bryson. I'm talking tangents where you go "what the hell am I reading again?" ( )

The material was interesting but the book dragged. Could have used less repetition. The book includes more than most people would ever want to know about the topic. ( )

Very nicely written book on verbal blunders. Commendably up to date on the theory and experimental findings, explained in a very accessible but never trivializing manner. The most interesting and original part of the book, however, is a reflection on why we attach high importance to an ideal of verbal fluency that we so rarely attain (and then at the cost of extreme concentration, backed up by rigorous training). I treasure this book because I received from the very hands of its author: I became friends with Michael in Austin, 2003, after he spotted an inquiry on disfluencies which I had posted on the LINGUIST mailing list. ( )

Who knew that a book about speech errors could be so entertaining? But there are many laughs to be had from the often hilarious mistakes that linguist Michael Erard uses to illustrate his theories. I am still giggling over the poor newscaster who said “Also keeping an eye on the Woodstock Rock Festival was New York’s governor, Rockin Nelsenfeller.” Ahem. But this book is far more than a collection of spoonerisms, malapropisms and eggcorns. Erhard makes some fascinating arguments that speech errors reveal valuable information about how we learn and use language.

Early on, the author makes a point of calling into question assumptions about that most famous of speech errors, the Freudian slip. In one chapter, he tells the story of the throw-down between Freud and Viennese professor Rudolph Meringer, whose speech error research Freud borrowed when presenting his own psychological slip theory. Freud may have won that battle publicly, but Meringer made a compelling argument that such errors are shaped far more by the mechanics of speech than they are by unconscious repressions.

Of particular interest to me personally were Erard’s discussions about pause fillers such as “uh” and “um,” which I was disturbed to hear myself using with abandon during my first radio interview. I feel better now knowing that these kinds of pause fillers actually serve an important speech function for both speaker and listener. Erard’s chapters on Toastmasters and the history of speaking fashions did reinforce my desire to train myself out of the habit when I’m on the air, though, but I now have slightly more realistic expectations about how thoroughly I’ll be able to do that. ( )