Have you ever wanted to learn Geometry, Calculus, Physics, German, and the mystical teachings of Orafoura? Well, now you can! Just not with this book. Well, except for the mystical bit. This book is guaranteed to cost you, or your money back. If there is ever a book that deserves to be burned, this is it. And while you are lighting a fire, why dont you also set your imagination ablaze? You can start by taking a gasoline shower and sprinting naked through Flint, Michigan. Or Phoenix. After all, the only way youll ever be able to reach your true potential is with a stepladder and a stretch.

Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not. They walk around half naked. They carry and eat food in public without offering it to others. They talk about things they see rather than hiding uncomfortable truths. They explicitly refuse to give. Why do they do these things? Many think these behaviors are a natural result of children's innate immaturity. But Elise Berman argues that children are actually taught to do things that adults avoid: to be rude, inappropriate, and immature. Before children learn to be adults, they learn to be different from them. Berman's main theoretical claim therefore is also a novel one: age emerges through interaction and is a social production. In Talking Like Children, Berman analyzes a variety of interactions in the Marshall Islands, all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations, efforts to ask for or avoid giving away food, contentious debates about supposed child abuse. In these dramas both large and small, age differences emerge through the decisions people make, the emotions they feel, and the power they gain. Berman's research includes a range of methods -- participant observation, video and audio recordings, interviews, children's drawings -- that yield a significant corpus of data including over 80 hours of recorded naturalistic social interaction. Presented as a series of captivating stories, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis of speech and interaction that shows what age means. Like gender and race, age differences are both culturally produced and socially important. The differences between Marshallese children and adults give both groups the ability to manipulate social life in distinct but often complementary ways. These differences produce culture itself. Talking Like Children establishes age as a foundational social variable and a central concern of anthropological and linguistic research.

In this book, I will show African Americans how and why they speak the way they do. Many cultural factors play a significant role in how African Americans develop their linguistic patterns. I am more concerned with the way African Americans speak today. Although the histories of African American linguistic patterns are essential, I am more focused on the here and now. Therefore, I will direct my attention toward the nest (family system) because here is where the development of linguistic patterns starts. I also want my brothers and sisters to understand that they live in a linguistically prejudiced society that only accepts Standard American English as the official tongue that represents the United States of America. The bottom line is, for African Americans to become successful in today’s society, they must become a code-switching culture, for they are not and will never be considered a bilingual group since their native linguistic tongue is linguistically defunct. And so, African Americans, you need to know that throughout your life, you will experience linguistic prejudice if you continue to speak only AAVE.

Calhoun Abby Clark is sick of being treated like a child. Sure, handsome Calhoun Ballenger and his brother might have taken her in when she was just a girl, but that was a long time ago. She may be far from the worldly girlfriends Calhoun usually spent time with, but Abby is determined to win his heart. Can she make the man of her dreams realize she's everything he's always wanted in a woman? Justin Shelby Jacobs never meant to hurt Justin Ballenger when she broke their engagement–and his heart–six years before. Truth is, she loves him more than ever...and she'd had her reasons for pushing him away years ago. But with her family facing hard times, Shelby is all on her own in Jacobsville, and she leans on Justin for support. Can she help the bitter rancher finally let down the walls around his heart–and let love in?