Susie Dent

"In Larpers and Shroomers: the Language Report, Countdown's Susie Dent chronicles our shape-shifting language, focusing particularly on what's new for 2004. She draws together highlights from the language of politics, TV, and chat rooms, and charts the new trends in grammar, pronunciation, and punctuation. Surveying subjects as diverse as teen slang and euphemisms, the language of food and drink, and taboo language, Larpers and Shroomers provides hours of fun browsing."--Jacket.

"Susie Dent explains buzzwords and more in the language report, her annual tour of the newest trends in English. Like its predecessors, fanboys and overdogs brings you the latest from the frontline of our fascinating language. From undercrackers and manbags to hoopties and uberchavs, this completely new volume charts the most recent additions to English and the changes in the way we are using it."--Jacket.

Have you ever wondered why hairdressers always ask you where you're going on holiday or how ticket inspectors discreetly request back-up? What about cabbies' knowledge, what rhyming slang really means, or how a magician's patter works? We are surrounded by hundreds of tribes, each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colorful words, jokes and phrases, honed through years of conversations on the battlefield, in A&E, backstage and at ten-thousand feet in the air. Here, at last, is a witty guide through the linguistic minefields that surround us all. Susie Dent has spent years interviewing hundreds of professionals, hobbyists and enthusiasts and has created an idiosyncratic phrasebook like no other. From the freemason's handshake to the barista's guide to what your coffee says about you, Dent's Modern Tribes takes us on a whirlwind tour of Britain, decoding its secret languages and finding out what really makes us tick.