New Books in Language and Translation
Episodes
Amy Koerber, “From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History" (Penn State UP, 2018)
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in Language, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Amy Koerber (she/hers), Professor at Texas Tech University, on the...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Andrew Ollett, "Language of the Snakes" (U California Press, 2017)
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Ollett, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, argues in his book, Langua...
Cosmopolitan Printing in a Hybrid Language: A Discussion of the Sino-Malay Literary Tradition (1870-1949) with Dr Tom Hoogervorst
18 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Indonesia is home to one of the world’s largest Chinese-descended populations. Their historical impact is often measured in economic terms but was e...
Dennis Baron, "What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She" (Liveright, 2020)
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today Dennis Baron talks about his new book What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He & She (Liveright, 2020). Baron is professor emeritus in English at the Uni...
Elise Berman, "Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands" (Oxford UP, 2019)
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since World War II, the fate of the Marshal Islands has been tied to the United States. The Marshalls were a site of military testing, host a US milit...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
Kate Lockwood Harris, "Beyond the Rapist: Title IX and Sexual Violence on US Campuses" (Oxford UP, 2019)
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at ...
David Adger, "Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Adger is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, where he is Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. He has ...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Eleanor Gordon-Smith, "Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds" (PublicAffairs, 2019)
29 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With today's furious political and cultural divisions, it's easy to shake our heads in exasperation at those who disagree with us. In this episode wit...
H. Suzanne Woods and L. A. Hahner, "Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right" (Peter Lang, 2019)
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at ...
Timothy J. Shaffer, "A Crisis of Civility? Political Discourse and its Discontents" (Routledge, 2019)
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There are a lot of calls these days to “revive civility” in politics. While there are plenty of examples of uncivil behavior, there’s far less a...
Céline Carayon, "Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas" (UNC Press, 2019)
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Taking a fresh look at the first two centuries of French colonialism in the Americas, Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and In...
Alexandra D'Arcy, "Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context: Eight hundred years of LIKE" (John Benjamins, 2017)
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Like is a ubiquitous feature of English with a deep history in the language, exhibiting regular and constrained variable grammars over time. Alexandra...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Patricia Roberts-Miller, "Demagoguery and Democracy" (The Experiment, 2017)
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When you think of the word “demagogue,” what comes to mind? Probably someone like Hitler or another bombastic leader, right? Patricia Roberts-Mill...
Daniel Schwartz, "Ghetto: The History of a Word" (Harvard UP, 2019)
19 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The word “ghetto” has taken on different meanings since its coinage in the 16th century. The uses of this term have varied considerably, from its ...
Jonathan Rosa, "Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Rosa's new book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (Oxford University Pr...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
Andreas Bernard, "Theory of the Hashtag" (Polity, 2019)
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his short book, Theory of the Hashtag (Polity, 2019), Andreas Bernard traces the origins and career of the hashtag. Following the history of the # ...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Don Kulick, "A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea" (Algonquin Books, 2019)
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Called "perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature" by ...
Malcolm Keating, "Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophy of Language was a central concern in classical Indian Philosophy. Philosophers in the tradition discussed testimony, pragmatics, and the ...
Jonathan G. Kline, "Keep Up Your Biblical Greek in 2 Minutes a Day" (Hendrickson, 2017)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The last few years have seen a proliferation of helps for those of us who struggle to consolidate and develop our knowledge of ancient languages. But ...
Anne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019)
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--Dr. Anne Cheng (...
Sharon Kirsch, "Gertrude Stein and the Reinvention of Rhetoric" (U Alabama Press, 2014)
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Sharon Kirsch (she/hers)--Associate Prof. of Engli...
Derek Gaunt, "Ego, Authority, Failure: Using Emotional Intelligence Like a Hostage Negotiator to Succeed as a Leader" (New Degree Press, 2019)
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo—...
Richard Averbeck, "Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research" (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)
04 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhause...
Mary Kate McGowan, "Just Words: On Speech and Hidden Harm" (Oxford UP, 2019)
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all familiar with the ways in which speech can cause harm. For example, speech can incite wrongful acts. And I suppose we’re also familiar w...
John Pat Leary, "Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2019)
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John Pat Leary's Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2019) chronicles the rise of a new vocabulary in the twenty-first century....
Donnel Stern, "The Infinity of the Unsaid: Unformulated Experience, Language, and the Nonverbal" (Routledge, 2019)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Donnel Stern has been a key figure in the advancement of interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis since his initial writings on unformulated experi...
A. M. Ruppell, "The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
01 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why would anyone want to study Sanskrit, an ancient complex tongue? What’s the best way to go about doing so? Sanskrit is the highly sophisticated...
Shonaleeka Kaul, "The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini" (Oxford UP, 2018)
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Shonaleeka Kaul is a cultural historian of early South Asia specializing in working with Sanskrit texts. She is Associate Professor at the Centre ...
Leslie Hahner, "To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization Campaigns of the Early 20th Century" (Michigan State UP, 2017)
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (she/they)--Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Leslie Ha...
Anne Cheng, "Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface" (Oxford UP, 2017)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Pr...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Richard Salomon, "The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduction with Selected Translation" (Wisdom Publications, 2018)
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books in Buddhist Studies, Dr. Richard Salomon speaks about his book The Buddhist Literature of Ancient Gandhāra: An Introduct...
Bradford Vivian, "Commonplace Witnessing: Rhetorical Invention, Historical Remembrance, and Public Culture" (Oxford UP, 2017)
27 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in Communications, Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Bradford Vivian (he/his) of Penn State University on his fabulous...
Richard Gombrich, "Buddhism and Pali" (Mud Pie Slices, 2018)
06 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Gombrich's new book, Buddhism and Pali (Mud Pie Slices, 2018), puts the richness of the Pali language on display. He introduces the reader to ...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Mark Polizzotti, “Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto” (MIT Press, 2018)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The success of a translator may seem to lie in going unnoticed: the translator ducks out of the spotlight so that the original author may shine. Mark...
Matthieu Villatte, “Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention” (Guilford Press, 2015)
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Humans are the only animals that can use language processes to create abstract, symbolic thoughts. This is both a blessing and a curse. Although symbo...
J.R. Osborn, “Letters of Light: Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design” (Harvard UP, 2017)
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Arabic script is astounding! Not only because it represents one of the most commonly spoken languages today –that is, the Arabic language– but b...
Allyson Jule, “Speaking Up: Understanding Language and Gender” (Multilingual Matters, 2018)
28 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In a time where concepts such as gender pronouns, sexual assault and harassment, and toxic masculinity are entering and shaping public discourse, know...
J. Lester, C. Lochmiller, and R. Gabriel, “Discursive Perspectives on Education Policy and Implementation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The study of education policy is a scholarly field that sheds light on important debates and controversies revolving around education policy and its i...
Steven Alvarez, “Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies” (SUNY Press, 2018)
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Steven Alvarez about his book, Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies (SUNY Pr...
John H. McWhorter, “The Creole Debate” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John H. McWhorter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He has written academic books on creole linguis...
Steven Gimbel, “Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy” (Routledge, 2018)
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Humor and its varied manifestations—jesting joking around, goofing, lampooning, and so on—pervade the human experience and are plausibly regarded ...
Andrii Danylenko, “From the Bible to Shakespeare: Pantelejmon Kuliš (1819-1897) and the Formation of Literary Ukrainian” (Academic Studies Press, 2016)
27 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does a language develop? What are the factors and processes that shape a language and reflect the changes it undergoes? These seemingly routine qu...
Steven Alvarez, “Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning From Bilingual After-School Programs” (NCTE, 2017)
25 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Steven Alvarez about his book, Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning From Bilingual After-School Programs (Nationa...
Ji-Yeon O. Jo, “Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For anyone with an interest in Korean studies, the study of diaspora and globalization, and indeed in broader questions around transnational identitie...
Rosina Lozano, “An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States” (U California Press, 2018)
28 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (University of California Press, 2018), Rosina Lozano details the entangled rela...
Roderick P. Hart, “Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
24 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
To find out what Americans really think about their government, University of Texas-Austin Professor Roderick P. Hart read and analyzed approximately ...
Ruth G. Millikan, “Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information” (Oxford UP, 2018)
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kant famously asked the question, how is knowledge possible? In her new book, Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information (Oxford Uni...
Walter N. Hakala, “Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia” (Columbia UP, 2016)
02 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For many people language is a central characteristic of their social identity. In modern South Asia, the production of Urdu and Hindi as national lang...
Jeanine Kraybill, “Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Unconventional, Partisan, and Polarizing Rhetoric: How the 2016 Election Shaped the Way Candidates Strategize, Engage, and Communicate (Rowman and ...
Daniel J. Kapust, “Flattery and the History of Political Thought: That Glib and Oily Art” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kapust‘s book, Flattery and the History of Political Thought: That Glib and Oily Art (Cambridge University Press, 2018), is a rich and fascin...
Cynthia Baker, “Jew” (Rutgers UP, 2017)
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the significance of Jew? How has this word come to have such varied and charged meanings? Who has (and has not) used it, and why? Cynthia Bake...
Kathryn Woolard, “Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in Twenty-First Century Catalonia” (Oxford UP, 2016)
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kathryn Woolard is Professor Emerita and Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She has authored seminal works...
Karen Neander, “A Mark of the Mental: In Defense of Informational Teleosemantics” (MIT Press, 2017)
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The two biggest problems of understanding the mind are consciousness and intentionality. The first doesn’t require introduction. The latter is the p...
Public Debate and Respectful Engagement with John Corvino
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Corvino is Professor of Philosophy at the Wayne State University in Detroit. His academic work focuses on topics in moral, social, and legal ph...
Testimony and Anonymity with Sandy Goldberg
28 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sandy Goldberg is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of language, with particular inte...
Mario Luis Small, “Someone to Talk To” (Oxford UP, 2017)
19 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Who do people turn to when they want to talk about serious issues in their life? Do they end up confiding in people they list as confidants? In his ne...
Sarah Rivett, “Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation” (Oxford UP, 2017)
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation (Oxford University Press, 2017), Princeton University English Associa...
Ian Brodie, “A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy” (UP of Mississippi, 2014).
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In A Vulgar Art: A New Approach to Stand-Up Comedy (The University Press of Mississippi, 2014), Ian Brodie, an associate professor of folklore at Cape...
Stephanie Brookes, “Politics, Media and Campaign Language: Australia’s Identity Anxiety” (Anthem Press, 2017)
12 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Politics, Media and Campaign Language: Australia’s Identity Anxiety (Anthem Press, 2017), Stephanie Brookes, a Lecturer in Journali...
Michael Flier and Andrea Graziosi, eds. “The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective” (Harvard UP, 2017)
11 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Language is one of the complex systems facilitating communication; language is a system producing the inside and the outside of the individual’s awa...
Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017)
10 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Kristia...
Free Speech and Free Thinking with Seana Shiffrin
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Seana Shiffrin is Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA. She defends the “thinker theory” of freed...
Bruce B. Lawrence, “The Koran in English: A Biography” (Princeton UP, 2017)
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As the basis for a major world religion, the Qur’an is one of the most influential books of all time. But when it first appeared, the Qur’an was i...
Alessandro Duranti, “The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
26 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Alessandro Duranti is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, where he served as Dean of Social Sciences from 2009-2016. In his book The Anth...
Karmen MacKendrick, “The Matter of Voice: Sensual Soundings” (Fordham UP, 2016)
19 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophers have long tried to silence the physical musicality of voice in favor of the purity of ideas without matter, souls without bodies. But voi...
Good & Bad Arguments with Trudy Govier
28 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Trudy Govier is Emerita Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Her research is focused on the nature of argument...
Kees van Deemter, “Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
22 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes we have to depend on philosophy to explain to us why something apparently simple is in fact extremely complicated. The way we use referring ...
Sarah Ruden, “The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible” (Pantheon, 2017)
17 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On this program, we talk to Sarah Ruden about her new book, The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible (Pantheon, 2017). Novel...
Lewis Glinert, “The Story of Hebrew” (Princeton UP, 2017)
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated ...
Free Speech Matters with Robert George
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The ‘ideological odd couple’ of Robert George and Cornel West jointly authored a statement defending free speech on campus and elsewhere. Find ou...
Audrey Truschke, “Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court” (Columbia UP, 2016)
03 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Contemporary scholarship on the Mughal empire has generally ignored the role Sanskrit played in imperial political and literary projects. However, in ...
Telesphore Ngarambe, “Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law” (OSSREA, 2015)
06 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The unprecedented crime of the 1994 Rwandan genocide demanded an unconventional legal response. After failed attempts by the international legal syste...
Dovid Katz, “Yiddish and Power” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
18 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As described by Dovid Katz, Yiddish is an extraordinarily multifaceted language: a language that is at once acclaimed as sacred and dismissed as defic...
Matthew Pauly, “Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934” (U. of Toronto Press, 2014)
15 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew Pauly’s Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) offers a detail...
Jennifer Glaser, “Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination” (Rutgers UP, 2016)
07 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Jennifer Glaser, Associate P...
Sali Tagliamonte, “Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
26 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Teenagers get a lot of bad press. Whether it’s how they look, how they dress, the things they say, the way they say it – it sometimes seems as if ...
Ellen Mayock, “Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
13 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Recent controversies surrounding sexual harassment and assault on college campuses have sparked heated discussions surrounding the everyday experience...
Ingrid Piller, “Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics” (Oxford UP, 2016)
03 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
According to the blurb, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press, 2016) “explor...
Simon Critchley, “ABC of Impossibility” (Univocal Publishing, 2015)
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
From its opening fragment on “Fragments” to its “Possibly dolorous tropical lyrical coda,” Simon Critchley‘s new book is a pleasure to hold ...
Prakash Mondal, “Language, Mind and Computation” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
17 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
My instinct as a researcher is usually to shy away from confrontation about foundational issues in the philosophy of language, which is probably why I...
Aviya Kushner, “The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible” (Spiegel and Grau, 2015)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking family, reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and debating its meaning over the dinner table. She knew m...
Kenneth L. Marcus, “The Definition of Anti-Semitism” (Oxford UP, 2015)
12 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press, 2015), Kenneth L. Marcus, the President and General Counsel of the Louis D. Brandeis Cent...
Geoffrey Sampson, “Writing Systems” (Equinox, 2015)
08 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not always been clear how the study of written language fits into linguistics. As a relatively recent historical development, it’s tempting t...
Kate Pahl, “Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited” (Bloomsbury, 2014)
06 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Literary practices are often associated with specific social groups in particular social settings. Kate Pahl‘s Materializing Literacies in Communiti...
Liora R. Halperin, “Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948” (Yale UP, 2014)
10 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920-1948 (Yale University Press, 2015), Liora R. Halperin, an Assistant Pro...
Chad Engelland, “Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind” (MIT Press, 2015)
14 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How do we learn our first words? What is it that makes the linguistic intentions of others manifest to us, when our eyes follow a pointing finger to a...
James Turner, “Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities” (Princeton University Press, 2014)
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
James Turner is Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Notre Dame University. His book Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanit...
Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis, “The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
21 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the Indo-Europeans? Were they all-conquering heroes? Aggressive patriarchal Kurgan horsemen, sweeping aside the peaceful civilizations of Old...
Colin McGinn, “Philosophy of Language: the Classics Explained” (MIT Press, 2015)
28 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
I must admit that my relationship to philosophy of language is a bit like my relationship to classic literature: I tend to admire it from afar, and re...
Naomi S. Baron, “Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World” (Oxford UP, 2015)
01 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Screens are ubiquitous. From the screen on a mobile, to that on a tablet, or laptop, or desktop computer, screens appear all around us, full of conten...
Jason Stanley, “How Propaganda Works” (Princeton UP, 2015)
01 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Propaganda names a familiar collection of phenomena, and examples of propaganda are easy to identify, especially when one examines the output of total...
Pieter Seuren, “From Whorf to Montague: Explorations in the Theory of Language” (Oxford UP, 2013)
18 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A colleague once told me that people in linguistics could be divided into two groups: sheep and snipers. I’m not sure whether this is a proper dicho...