This reissue will include a new foreword and an afterword which will address the original need for the book and developments which have occurred since publishing the book.

Preface. Foreword. 1. On Verbal Hygiene.2. Restrictive Practices: the Politics of Style. 3. Dr Syntax and Mrs Grundy: The Great Grammar Crusade 4. Civility and its Discontents: Language and "Political Correctness". 5. The New Pygmalion: Verbal Hygiene for Women. 6. On the State of the State of the Language. Afterword. Notes.

Deborah Cameron is Professor of Language and Communication in the English Faculty of Oxford University. A sociolinguist and discourse analyst, she is the author of Good to Talk? (2000), On Language and Sexual Politics (2006) and The Myth of Mars and Venus (2007).