Honey is both a populist and a highly successful self-publicist.
Language is Power has attracted much attention in the British press, most of it positive, and it is not difficult to understand why given the arguments he is advancing. Broadly speaking, he advocates that 'standard' English should be taught in schools and that a body, official or unofficial, should be set up to regulate disputed usages and manage language change. On the way, he rubbishes various linguistic orthodoxies and their proponents reserving a special venom for Tony Crowley's work on the historiography of the English language and Peter Trudgill's concerns for linguistic equality. The main difficulty with the book involves sorting out the sense from the sheer silliness that Honey frequently displays. Few people would deny that the teaching of English, at least in Britain and possibly also in the USA, is in a confused state at the moment.