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From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWhorter at Columbia University. I teach linguistics, among other things.

My book just out this September is Words on the Move, which I wrote, to help people hear language in a whole new way.

And this week, as you listen to this, you can have

your own copy of my very latest, Talking Back, Talking Black, which is designed to make you hear

black English in a whole new way. Some of you may remember that when I first started hosting

this show last summer, I was doing interviews. Those were fun, but in the fall, I started doing solo shows,

starting with the one about the backshift. You'll only know what that is if you've been listening in since then.

But as of this new year, I want to start mixing it up because other people are more interesting than I am,

such as today's guest, who is Mark Seidenberg. Mark is a professor of psychology at the

University of Wisconsin at Madison, and he's a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories,

but more to the point, he is the author of a wonderful new book, Language at the Speed of Sight,

How We Read, Why So Many Can't, and what we can do about it.

This is a book that I've been excited about since I was sent a galley several months ago,

and I've been waiting to have Professor Seidenberg on Lexicon Valley when the book came out for real,

ever since, which it has.

Truth is, reading isn't what linguists usually study.

We're into speech.

...