Book Review

Introduction to Linguistics

“Introduction to Linguistics” is a book that was written by Rusdi Noor Rosa, S.S., M.Hum., who was born in Medan on August 18, 1977. He has been lecturing in Universitas Negeri Padang since December 1, 2003. His research focuses on Macro Linguistics. “Introduction to Linguistic”, adequately encapsulates the message of the book, is a nonfiction book which is intended to college students. The main purpose of this book is to give assistance for everybody who wants to know more about the basic of linguistics. This book provides basic understanding of linguistic knowledge that introduces linguistics as a science discussing the essence of language. This book provides revealing information about the book in the preface and this book is arranged with chapters’ mode. The book jackets do not have any picture on it, but its title is written with purple and blue color and white as background’s color.

·         Publisher and Location          : Penerbit Sukabina Press, Padang 2013

·         Number of Pages                   : 253 pages + 17 Roman numerals

·         Arranged by                          : Rusdi Noor Rosa, S.S., M.Hum.

·         Layout by                              : Sari Jumiatti

·         Cover design by                    : Marzal Ardhika

This book provides basic understanding of linguistic knowledge in general. It provides the students with basic and general concept, terms, theories, and fields of linguistics. This book consists of 10 chapters; Animal communication and human language, Linguistics as the scientific study of language, Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, and Psycholinguistics. It also has 17 Roman numerals pages (XVII), containing preface, acknowledgements, table of contents, list of tables and list of figures. At the end of each chapter, it includes exercises there.

This book tells about the differentiations between animal communication and human language. Then, this book explains about history of linguistics which was first used in England in 1837. Classification of linguistics is divided into 2 parts; Microlinguistics and Macrolinguistics. Then, this book explains how phonetics and phonology are differed.  Phonetics focus on how sounds are produced while phonology focuses on how sounds are organized and how their function in language. Next, this book explains about morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of word formation & structure, and syntax is the study of phrase & sentence structure. After that, this book explains about semantics and pragmatics. Semantics was introduced into English at the end of the 19th century. It is a branch of linguistics that study about the meaning of words, phrases, or sentence in the language. Pragmatics is another branch of linguistics that is concerned with meaning, but its focus is on a person’s ability to drive meanings from specific kinds of speech situation. Last, this book explains about the differentiation between sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Sociolinguistics is focus in relation to the society while psycholinguistics focuses in relation to its psychological process. To sum up, those all are the contents of this book.

This book has several weaknesses. The first one is the cover of this book is too stiff. The font color of the title is blue and purple with white color as background. I think it will be better if the cover of this book has more colors. Besides, the cover does not have any picture on it. I think it will be better if the cover has picture. However, I am sure that the readers will be more interested if the cover has more color and picture. Next, there are many high level vocabularies here. The other weakness of this book is the paper of the book. The paper of this book is easy let-off from the book. As the result, the readers lost some pages from the book.

Actually, it is a good book because it contains much important information that is needed by college students, especially the beginner of English students who want to learn about linguistics. This book explained about the branch of linguistics shortly without eliminating important elements. This book gives a lot of information that are supported by some expert, so the contents in this book absolutely could be justified. Besides, this book also has exercises that can be used to test readers understanding about the items. Those all are the excesses of this book.

Overall, I like this book. Even though it has several weaknesses, the weaknesses could be covered by the excesses of this book. The contents of this book are important to linguistics learners. I think this book is properly to be read by the beginner of English learners who want to know and understand about the basic understanding of linguistics.