Through exploration of the origins of language, Roger Brown helps readers understand how language has developed from its beginnings into the marketing, advertising, and communication tools we use it as today.

Providing commentary on language through the context of human behavior, Words and Things looks at the origins of language in the world of children and primitives and traces its development across the ages.

Exploring how language has become a tool of propaganda and advertising, Roger Brown explores the process of choosing sounds for ideas and looks for the earliest root words with which language began.