You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity by Robert Lane Greene

"CBS Early Show" anchor Jeff Glor interviews author Robert Lane Greene about his new book, "You Are What You Speak."

Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?

Robert Lane Greene: Writing about politics and society was my day job as a journalist, and writing about language was a personal passion. I started to see a book in the overlap between the two. First I started thinking about a book about language, and my question to myself: why do so many people seem so angry, anxious or otherwise upset about language so much? Then came the question of cause: what are its deeper roots in society? In our culture? That got me asking where a language comes from, how languages get their "rules", why people are so attached to the rules, and what the wider consequences (politically, socially) for all this anxiety about language correctness.

JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?

RLG: I was pleasantly surprised at the joys of working in an actual library. For all the talk about books being dead, writing a book being surrounded by books at NYU's library was a pleasure because when I would look for a specific work that I knew existed, I'd get lost in thought in the stacks looking through other books I'd never thought about. That serendipity led me to learn many things I wouldn't have learned otherwise, things that made their way into the final product. If you write exactly the book you set out to write, you've probably done something wrong.

JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?

RLG: I teach occasionally at NYU; if I weren't writing full-time I might teach full time. I do love explaining the things I've tried to figure out for myself, as my friends and family will tell you. I like the back-and-forth. Students ask questions I've never thought about before, and so I learn from them too. And they bring life experiences -- the program I teach in is very international -- that enrich my understanding of the world too. And the really great students are inspiring; you see them learning from you, but they take what they get and go off in directions of their own. You just want to follow and see where it leads them.

JG: What else are you reading right now?

RLG: I have a bad habit of reading about three or four things at a time, and I read slowly, which means it takes me eons to finish anything. So I'm reading Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby's book about the history of secularism in America; The First Word, Christine Kenneally's book about the evolution of language; What Hath God Wrought, Daniel Walker Howe's history of America from 1815-1848; and Martin Amis's memoir, Experience. Plus I dip all the time into The Limits of Language, a quirky book by Mikael Parkvall that tells many strange-but-true stories about languages around the world.

JG: What's next for you?

RLG: I don't know yet; I've had ideas as broad and ambitious as a book on the contested meaning of America and as narrow as explaining language and the mind through jokes. I'm also fascinated by religion lately, and everyone's got this book in their house they've never read called The Bible. I thought about reading the Bible really slowly and carefully and trying to make sense of it, and write about this book that is both incredibly familiar and surprisingly unfamiliar to us.

For more on "You Are What You Speak," visit the Random House website.