Riddle: Why is a telescope like a bad excuse? Answer: Because anyone can see through it.
The authors of this book would like to help anyone – but particularly students of English – to “see through” language, whether as the instrument of perception or as the evasive code. They write about texts, and the making of texts, and how texts are made to carry various kinds of meaning; and the topics they choose to write about range from the lexicon of car maintenance manuals to the role of grammatical modality in lit…
