Language in Action is a big book on a big subject, all about geolinguistics (who speaks what language or languages where and what that means in terms of culture and politics, trade and all other aspects of life) and also onomastics (the study of proper nouns, names in life and literature). Subjects addressed are Early American, US dialects, the differences between the British and American languages, English in India, Freshman English as a Second and Foreign Language, Burundi and French in Africa, various Celtic languages, Cuban Spanish, Dutch and English, the language of the Gilbert & Ellis Islands, Gobbledygook and jargon, Kamtok in Papua New Guinea, Spanglish, the placenames of the Dakotas, Norwegian and English, odd languages of Europe (living and dead), origins of 55 common expressions, Polish and Polish-Americans, rules of the language game, secret languages, Spanish regional languages, Suriname as a multilingual society, English in Switzerland, Yiddish and Yinglish, strange languages of Africa, classical languages, Amerindian names, names in business and real estate, the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, changing names, names for houses, names in magic, placenames of Iowa, word games, names in satire and in literary onomastics in general, Martin Amis’ Money: A Suicide Note and satire as sociolinguistics, names in folklore, political language, slang in US politics, personal and national identity, and the language of minority politics—all in terms the average reader can easily understand.
The Author Ola J. Holten, Norw. linguist. He was born in Surnadal, Nordmøre, Norway. He made broad studies of old and modern languages at a number of Universities in different European countries. Holten has throughout his life been a professional teacher of modern languages, mainly German, French, English and Swedish, first in Norway, later in Sweden where he is married and lives today. He also has a vivid interest in Nordic Folklore, as the book "Nordic Folklore and Traditions" shows. He has for years worked on a large Dictionary of the Nordmøre Dialect (an archaic dative language). Leonard R. N. Ashley, PhD (Princeton), LHD (Columbia Theological) is professor emeritus of Brooklyn College of The City University of New York and author of dozens of published works in linguistics (Language in Action, Language in Modern Society, six books on onomastics) and literature (literary history such as History of the Short Story and Elizabethan Folklore; literary biography such as George Peele and Colley Cibber and George Alfred Henty and the Victorian Mind; criticism such as Authorship and Evidence in Renaissance Drama; anthologies and textbooks; military history (such as Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” Book of the Military and The Air Defence of North America for NORAD), the occult (11 books in a Barricade Books series), and more. His latest book is light verse (Animal Crackers: An Alphabestiary) but serious books in press are Language in Action and (with Ola J. Holten of Sweden) volume 1 of Nordic Folklore and Traditions. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly papers, innumerable articles and reviews in numerous periodicals here and abroad, and contributions to major US and foreign encyclopedias and other reference books. His Last Days is characteristically both amazingly erudite and entertaining, well researched and captivating on all aspects, historical and current, of the End Times.