Vernacular Eloquence

Elbow (English, emeritus, Univ. of Mass., Amherst; Writing Without Teachers) devotes his latest book to the value the spoken word brings to literacy and, ultimately, the written word. The text is part homage to the power of techniques like freewriting that teach writers to silence their stifling internal critic and part treatise on the misguided notion that speech is inferior to and/or separate from writing. The first portion of the book is the more scholarly, expounding on the differences and similarities between spoken and written language. Succeeding parts grow more practical, though Elbow's sidebars and "literacy stories" continue the theoretical thread. The book concludes with arguments for vernacular literacy and its power to revitalize, reform, and sometimes even trump edited written English, the so-called standard.