New Books in Language and Translation
Episodes
Allison M. Prasch, "The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Allison M. Prasch, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book that focuses on the w...
Anna Ziajka Stanton, "The Worlding of Arabic Literature: Language, Affect, and the Ethics of Translatability" (Fordham UP, 2023)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Critics have long viewed translating Arabic literature into English as an ethically fraught process of mediating between two wholly incommensurable la...
Jonathan Downs, "Discovery at Rosetta: Revealing Ancient Egypt" (American University in Cairo Press, 2020)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1798, young French general Napoleon Bonaparte entered Egypt with a veteran army and a specialist group of savants—scientists, engineers, and arti...
Stephanie R. Larson, "What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What it feels like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture (Penn State Press, 2021) by Dr. Stephanie Larson interrogates an underexamined...
John Guillory Professes Criticism (JP, Nick Dames)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Guillory (NYU English author of the pathbreaking Cultural Capital) is here to discuss his amazing new Professing Criticism: Essays on the Orga...
Piers Kelly, "The Last Language on Earth: Linguistic Utopianism in the Philippines" (Oxford UP, 2021)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the southern Philippines, the Bohol community speaks a language they say one man, Pinay, created long ago, leaving it for a modern Filipino named M...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
Prachi Deshpande, "Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India" (Permanent Black, 2023)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India (Permanent Black, 2023) is a cultural history of western India ...
The Future of Talking: A Discussion with Shane O'Mara
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Talking is a defining part of what makes us human – we are almost constantly in dialogue but what purpose does all this conversation serve? Both for...
Morgan J. Robinson, "A Language for the World: The Standardization of Swahili" (Ohio UP, 2022)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also arou...
Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Jieun Kiaer provides an in-depth discussion of emoji use in a glo...
Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos: The Landscape of Translation in Southeast Asia
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does a map of Southeast Asia as a pegasus have to do with translation and Southeast Asia? How can we think of translation as anything other than ...
Courtney Adams Wooten, "Childfree and Happy: Transforming the Rhetoric of Women's Reproductive Choices" (Utah State UP, 2023)
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Childfree and Happy: Transforming the Rhetoric of Womens' Reproductive Choices (Utah State University Press, 2023) examines how millennia of reprodu...
Jae DiBello Takeuchi, "Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan" (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023)
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jae DiBello Takeuchi's Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan (Mulitlingual Matters, 2023) examines dilemmas fa...
The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science...
Toril Moi, "Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Toril Moi, whose book Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell (University of Chicago P...
The Art of Translation: A Discussion with Anne Birkenhauer Molad
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Translation is a mysterious process that combines the elements of writing – rhythm and voice, meaning, structure and nuance – with the challenge o...
Amir Sedaghat, "Translating Rumi Into the West: A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond" (Routledge, 2023)
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amir Artaban Sedaghat’s Translating Rumi into the West: A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond (Routledge, 2023) engages Rumi, the 13th-century Muslim ...
Tom Mustill, "How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill—the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breach...
The Eternal Letter: Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The fiftieth anniversary of Helvetica, the most famous of all sans serif typefaces, was celebrated with an excitement unusual in the staid world of ty...
Philip Kirby and Margaret J. Snowling, "Dyslexia: A History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
03 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1896 the British physician William Pringle Morgan published an account of “Percy,” a “bright and intelligent boy, quick at games, and in no w...
Nick Enfield on Language, Influence, and Science Communications
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Nick Enfield, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney for Language Research and the Sydney Initiative for Tr...
James Paul Gee, "What Is a Human?: Language, Mind, and Culture" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of James Gee, Regents' Professor and Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. ...
The International Association of Sanskrit Studies
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The newly-elected first female president of the The International Association of Sanskrit Studies, Dr. Dipti Tripathi discusses Association’s gene...
Jan Ke-Schutte, "Angloscene: Compromised Personhood in Afro-Chinese Translations" (U California Press, 2023)
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I had the pleasure of talking to Jay Ke-Schutte on his just released book, Angloscene: Compromised Personhood in Afro-Chinese Translations (U ...
Alexander Jabbari, "The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alexander Jabbari’s The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India (Cambridge University Press, 2023) na...
The Evolution of Language
11 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Samuel Jay Keyser, Editor-in-Chief of Linguistic Inquiry, has shared a campus with Noam Chomsky for 40-odd years via MIT's Department of Linguistics ...
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, "Decolonizing American Spanish: Eurocentrism and the Limits of Foreignness in the Imperial Ecosystem" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)
04 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jeffrey joins the podcast to discuss the prevalence of English in the academic ecosystem and in research publishing. Jeffrey critiques the lackadaisic...
Thomas Kelly, "Bias: A Philosophical Study" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of bias is familiar enough, partly because it is deployed frequently and in different contexts. For example, we talk about biased juror...
The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, author Ryan Milner talks to Chris Gondak about the rise of the internet meme, and the five logics that factor into the foundation, gr...
Philippe Schlenker, "What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything" (MIT Press, 2022)
25 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In What It All Means: Semantics for (Almost) Everything (MIT Press, 2022), Philippe Schlenker takes readers on tour of meaning, from the animal king...
Bernard D. Geoghegan, "Code: From Information Theory to French Theory" (Duke UP, 2023)
25 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan traces the shared intellectual and political history of computer scientists, cyberneticists, anthropologists, linguists, a...
Nathan Vedal, "The Culture of Language in Ming China: Sound, Script, and the Redefinition of Boundaries of Knowledge" (Columbia UP, 2022)
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the nature of language? This is the question that Nathan Vedal’s book, The Culture of Language in Ming China: Sound, Script, and the Rede...
Jennifer Clary-Lemon and David M. Grant, "Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics" (Ohio State UP, 2022)
11 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2022) brings together emerging and established voices at the nexus o...
Timothy Cleveland, "Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable" (Lexington Books, 2022)
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It seems undeniable that language has limits in what it can express – among other philosophers, Wittgenstein famously drew a line of this sort in hi...
Robert J. Dostal, "Gadamer's Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: Between Phenomenology and Dialectic (Northwestern University Press, 2022), Robert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive an...
Lois Presser, "Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences" (U California Press, 2022)
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. Unsaid: Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (U California Press,...
Dalal Abo El Seoud, "Fish, Milk, Tamarind: A Book of Egyptian Arabic Food Expressions" (American U in Cairo Press, 2022)
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Fish, Milk, Tamarind: A Book of Egyptian Arabic Food Expressions (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Dalal Abo El Seoud presents 100 c...
Edmund Leach on Roman Jakobson's Contributions to Linguistics
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear the1982 Gallatin Lecture, in which Sir Edmund Leach discussed the work of Roman Jakobson, who he...
Anatoly Liberman, "Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations. To pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or b...
The World Sanskrit Conference: A Discussion with McComas Taylor
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
McComas Taylor discusses the upcoming 18th World Sanskrit Conference January 9-13, 2023. The conference is held online. All are welcome to register ...
Michelle R. Boyd, "Becoming the Writer You Already Are" (Sage, 2022)
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Becoming the Writer You Already Are (Sage, 2022) helps scholars uncover their unique writing process and design a writing practice that fits how the...
Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, "Metamodernism: The Future of Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous cat...
Jane Stevenson, "Women and Latin in the Early Modern Period" (Brill, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Stevenson’s newest book, Women and Latin in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2022), tracks the history and historiography of women Latinists i...
Hilan Bensusan, "Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Hilan Bensusan clarifies the logic and structure of an essentially situated and i...
4.6 Translation is the Closest Way to Read: Ann Goldstein and Saskia Ziolkowski
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In our season finale, Ann Goldstein, renowned translator of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, gives a master class in the art and business of tran...
Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, "Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation" (Tilted Axis Press, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961 that 'Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,' meaning that the violence of colonialism can only be counteracted in ...
James Griffiths, "Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language" (Zed Books, 2021)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As globalisation continues languages are disappearing faster than ever, leaving our planet's linguistic diversity leaping towards extinction. The scie...
Tristan Grøtvedt Haze, "Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity" (Routledge, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, the philosopher and logician Saul Kripke published a small but hugely influential book, Naming and Necessity, in which he argued that some cl...
92 Janet McIntosh on "Let's Go Brandon," QAnon and Alt-Right Language (EF, JP)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book pr...
Online Sanskrit Study Resources
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Michael Fiden about University of Texas at Austin’s new open access online resource for second-year Sanskrit students, eithe...
Nirmalangshu Mukherji, "The Human Mind Through the Lens of Language: Generative Explorations" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Some time, millenia ago, people began using sounds: to coordinate, to solve problems, to think. Explaining this leap—from non-linguistic beings to l...
Michael Keevak, "On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation" (Hong Kong UP, 2022)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In On Saving Face: A Brief History of Western Appropriation (Hong Kong UP, 2022), Michael Keevak traces the Western reception of the Chinese concept...
Eric Hobsbawm on "Literacy and the Tower of Babel"
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode from the Vault, we hear from historian Eric Hobsbawm, a frequent visitor at the New York Institute for the Humanities. His talk, Liter...
Carles Prado-Fonts, "Secondhand China: Spain, the East, and the Politics of Translation" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Carles Prado-Fonts on his recently published book Secondhand China: Spain, the East, and the Politics of Translation (Northweste...
4.3 Strange Beasts of Translation: Yan Ge and Jeremy Tiang in Conversation
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Yan Ge and Jeremy Tiang are both writers who accumulate languages. Sitting down with host Emily Hyde, they discuss their work in and across Chinese...
Bo Mou, "Philosophy of Language, Chinese Language, Chinese Philosophy" (Brill, 2018)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Contributors to Philosophy of Language, Chinese Language, Chinese Philosophy, edited by Bo Mou, professor of philosophy at the San Jose State Univer...
Raúl Pérez, "The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy" (Stanford UP, 2022)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's e...
4.1 “Sometimes I’m just a little disappointed in English”
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A novelist, a translator and a theorist of translation walk into a Zoom Room......Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell, and Kate Briggs provide the perfec...
Lucía Fernández-Amaya, "A Linguistic Overview of Whatsapp Communication" (Brill, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital discourse has become a widespread way of communicating worldwide, WhatsApp being one of the most popular Instant Messaging tools. A Linguisti...
Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, "Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fiercely debated issues of this era is what to do about "bad" speech, hate speech, disinformation, propaganda campaigns, incitement of...
Asad Q. Ahmed, "Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his dense yet delightful new book Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia (University of California Pr...
Michael Sidney Fosberg, "Nobody Wants to Talk about It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations" (Incognito, 2020)
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations (Incognito, 2020), Michael Sidney Fosber...
Johanna Drucker, "Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Dr. Johanna Drucker provides the ...
Giore Etzion, "The Routledge Introductory Course in Modern Hebrew" (Routledge, 2019)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thinking about learning Modern Hebrew, but waiting for the perfect grammar? The Routledge Introductory Course in Modern Hebrew by Giore Etzion is a...
Rosemary Salomone, "The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language" (Oxford UP, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Spoken by a quarter of the world's population, English is today's lingua franca--its common tongue. The language of business, popular media, and inter...
Apabhraṃśa
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Abhishek Avtans talks about the apabhraṃśa, a word that refers to the middle stage of the Indo-Aryan languages, crucial links between ancient langu...
Robert McColl Millar, "Sociolinguistic History of Scotland" (Edinburgh UP, 2020)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Dr. Robert McColl Millar presents the first sociolinguistic history of ...
Lydia Wilkes et al., "Rhetoric and Guns" (Utah State UP, 2022)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Guns hold a complex place in American culture. Over 30,000 Americans die each year from gun violence, and guns are intimately connected to issues of p...
Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Jo Mackiewicz, Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University and editor of the Journal of...
Crosswords
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Kim talks to Adrienne Raphel about crossword puzzles. For lots more about crosswords, check out Adrienne’s book Thinking Inside the...
Julia Molinari, "What Makes Writing Academic: Rethinking Theory for Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Julia Molinari, lecturer in professional academic communication at The Open University (UK) and independent researcher. We...
Should Scholars Trust Machine Translation of their Articles?
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Should academic scholars trust machine translation for the publication of their academic articles? In this episode, Avi Staiman and Ana Guerberof Aren...
Kay Muhr and Liam Ó. hAisibéil, "The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland" (Oxford UP, 2021)
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland (Oxford UP, 2021) contains explanations of over 3,800 family names, of any origin, that are establi...
Peter Scharf, "Sabdanugamah: Indian Linguistic Studies in Honor of George Cardona; Volume 1: Vyakarana and Sabdabodha" (Sanskrit Library, 2021)
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sabdanugamah (Sanskrit Library, 2021) is the first of two volumes of studies in honor of Professor George Cardona, the preeminent authority on Panin...
Roslyn Petelin, "How Writing Works: A Field Guide to Effective Writing" (Routledge, 2021)
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Roslyn Petelin, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. We talk about her book How Writi...
Sofia Stolk, "The Opening Statement of the Prosecution in International Criminal Trials: A Solemn Tale of Horror" (Routledge, 2021)
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Sofia Stolk’s The Opening Statement of the Prosecution in International Criminal Trials: A Solemn Tale of Horror (Routledge, 2021) addresses t...
Mónica Guzmán, "I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times" (BenBella Books, 2022)
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer...
The Importance of Pali, the Language of Ancient Buddhism
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Core Buddhist teachings are preserved in the ancient Indian language Pali. Listen in as Aleix Ruiz-Falqués speaks about its structure, its signific...
Hana Videen, "The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English" (Princeton UP, 2022)
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer’s Middle English, Old...
Zhihui Fang, "Demystifying Academic Writing: Genres, Moves, Skills, and Strategies" (Routledge, 2021)
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Zhihui Fang, the Irving and Rose Fien Endowed Professor of Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at the Univers...
Priyambada Sarkar, "Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore" (Oxford UP, 2021)
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does a Bengali intellectual and poet have in common with a British-Austrian logician and philosopher? In Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wit...
Yiddish in Europe
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Yiddish is part of the family of Germanic languages with influences of Hebrew and Aramaic and encompasses many dialects spoken in several parts of Eur...
Szu-Wen Kung, "Translation of Contemporary Taiwan Literature in a Cross-Cultural Context" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Translation of Contemporary Taiwan Literature in a Cross-Cultural Context (Routledge, 2021) explores the social, cultural, and linguistic implicatio...
Jennifer Delfino, "Speaking of Race: Language, Identity, and Schooling Among African American Children" (Lexington Book, 2020)
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Speaking of Race: Language, Identity, and Schooling Among African American Children (Lexington Books, 2020), Jennifer Delfino explores the lingui...
Jennifer Petersen, "How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech" (Duke UP, 2022)
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In How Machines Came to Speak: Media Technologies and Freedom of Speech (Duke University Press, 2022), Jennifer Petersen constructs a genealogy of h...
Ellen Jones, "Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas" (Columbia UP, 2022)
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas (Columbia University Press, 2022), Ellen C. Jones centers not just translat...
Jing Tsu, "Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern" (Riverhead Books, 2022)
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of thousands of characters. Countless homonyms. Mutually unintelligible dialects across an entire country. This is what faced the Chinese thinker...
N. J. Enfield, "Language Vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" (MIT Press, 2022)
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is prim...
Eliza Jane Smith, "Literary Slumming: Slang and Class in Nineteenth-Century France" (Lexington Books, 2021)
04 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Eliza Jane Smith's Literary Slumming: Slang and Class in Nineteenth-Century France (Lexington Books, 2021) applies a sociolinguistic approach to the...
Dennis Duncan, "Index, a History of The: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age" (W.W. Norton, 2022)
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in Index, a History...
Mary Norris, "Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen" (Norton, 2020)
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Norris, The New Yorker's Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me: A...
Tony Veale, "Your Wit Is My Command: Building AIs with a Sense of Humor" (MIT Press, 2021)
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny. ...
Language Bias: The Last Back Door of Discrimination in America?
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hear Dr. Rosina Lippi-Green talk about some of her shocking findings on language discrimination and bias on campus. Lippi-Green and Avi discuss her bo...
Nigel A. Caplan, "Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Nigel Caplan, Associate Professor at the English Language Institute, University of Delaware. We talk generically. Nigel Ca...
Matthew C. Watson, "Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit" (Duke UP, 2020)
21 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit (Duke UP, 2020), Matthew C. Watson considers the life and work of artist an...
N. J. Enfield, "The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the most fascinating and complex cultural and linguistic areas in the world. This book provides a rich and comprehen...
Keith Kahn-Harris, "The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language" (Icon Books, 2021)
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A thrilling journey deep into the heart of language, from a rather unexpected starting point. Keith Kahn-Harris is a man obsessed with something seemi...
Exploring Science Literacy and Public Engagement with Science
31 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Ayelet Baram-Tsabari. We talk about the accessibility of science using Google to scholars and students in languages beyon...
From Linear A to Linear B: Suggestive Continuity
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Howard Burton talks with Ester Salgarella, Junior Research Fellow at St John's College, University of Cambridge, about her groundbrea...