Includes bibliographical references and index.

Do you eat mashed potato or mashed potatoes? Are you frowning with your eyebrows or your mouth? Did you need to google mugwump when Boris Johnson laid into Jeremy Corbyn? British and American English may seem similar, but their differences abound. Contentious cultural wars are waged daily, on both sides of the Atlantic. As an American linguist based in Britain, Lynne Murphy brings a wry fish-out-of-water wit and a keen eye to this great divide. Lynne Murphy is a professor in linguistics at the University of Sussex.
The English language is a beautiful thing, but it suffers under relentless assault from Americans who want nothing more than to corrupt the mother tongue. Well, that's what we're told. But what's the truth? And whose language is it anyway? Lynne Murphy, an American linguist living in England, dives into the war of words being waged over the Atlantic. In a laugh-out-loud report, she separates reality from myth in this special relationship and delves into the social and political forces that have seen British and American English part ways. From the origins of `the bee's knees' to why so many of Hollywood's evil geniuses sound as though they were educated at Oxford, The Prodigal Tongue reveals how our language really works and tells us where it's going.