Is our language sick? You might think so, judging from complaints: ‘The standard of speech and pronunciation in England has declined so much … that one is almost ashamed to let foreigners hear it’, moaned a writer in a daily newspaper. ‘The language the world is crying out to learn is diseased in its own country’, ranted another. ‘We are plagued with idiots on radio and television who speak English like the dregs of humanity, to the detriment of our children’, lamented yet another.

But why? At a time when English is a major world language, is it really in need of hospital treatment? A wide web of worries, a cobweb of old ideas, ensnares people as they think about language – any language – and this must be swept away.

But clearing the cobwebs is only the first stage. The language web is the overall title of this book. Webs, especially cobwebs, may entangle.