New Books in Language
412 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★ - 19 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Language about their New Books
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Episodes
Scott Soames, “Appreciating Analytic Philosophy” (Open Agenda, 2021)
November 09, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourAppreciating Analytic Philosophy is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Scott Soames, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Southern California. Scott Soames is specialized in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy. This detailed conversation provides a thoughtful introduction to analytic philosophy, including some examples of contemporary relevance to a wide range of other fields. Howard Burton is the founder of the I...
Michele Kennerly, "Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics" (U South Carolina Press, 2018)
November 05, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourThough typically considered oral cultures, ancient Greece and Rome also boasted textual cultures, enabled by efforts to perfect, publish, and preserve both new and old writing. In Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics (University of South Carolina Press, 2018) Michele Kennerly argues that such efforts were commonly articulated through the extended metaphor of the body. They were also supported by people on whom writers relied for various kinds of assistanc...
Caitlin Ring Carlson, "Hate Speech" (MIT Press, 2021)
October 29, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourHate speech can happen anywhere - in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khakis shouted, "Jews will not replace us"; in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to target the Muslim Rohingya; in Cape Town, South Africa, where a pastor called on ISIS to rid South Africa of the "homosexual curse." In person or online, people wield language to attack others for their race, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or other aspects of iden...
Carol Padden, “Sign Language Linguistics” (Open Agenda, 2021)
October 18, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourSign Language Linguistics is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and renowned researcher of sign languages Carol Padden, the Sanford I. Berman Chair in Language and Human Communication at UC San Diego. This extensive conversation covers a wide range of topics related to sign language, such as growing up with ASL, Carol’s early work with Bill Stokoe, the linguistic complexity, structure and properties of ASL and other sign languages, the development of new sign langu...
Antonia M. Ruppel, "An Introductory Sanskrit Reader: Improving Reading Fluency" (Brill, 2021)
October 14, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourAn Introductory Sanskrit Reader: Improving Reading Fluency (Brill, 2021) aims to help students start reading original Sanskrit literature. When we study ancient languages, there often is quite a gap between introductory, grammar-based classes and independent reading of original texts. This Reader bridges that gap by offering complete grammar and vocabulary notes for 40 entertaining, thought-provoking or simply beautiful passages from Sanskrit narrative and epic, as well as over 130 subhāṣitas...
Henning Trüper, "Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
October 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourAt the turn of the nineteenth century, European philologists were engaged in the study of Semitic languages and Indology, breaking with the past in many ways. To understand this period, Henning Trüper argues for the importance of a broad-ranging investigation into the production of scholarly knowledge, focusing especially on Semitic Orientalism, as a way to understand the deep epistemological crisis facing the field. In Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World (Blooms...
James Diggle, "Cambridge Greek Lexicon" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
October 05, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutesProfessor James Diggle, editor in chief of the Cambridge Greek Lexicon (Cambridge UP, 2021), joins us to explain the background to this extraordinary project. Setting out to provide a standard for students and professional readers of ancient Greek texts, Diggle's lexicon reflects a wider range of usage than Liddell and Scott, and provides translations that move significantly beyond the often modest, even coy, preferences of these Victorian editors. As the fruit of decades of team-work, this l...
Sarah Nannery and Larry Nannery, "What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love—with Autism Spectrum Disorder" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
September 30, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhen Sarah Nannery got her first job at a small nonprofit, she thought she knew exactly what it would take to advance. But soon she realized that even with hard work and conscientiousness, she was missing key meanings and messages embedded in her colleagues' everyday requests, feedback, and praise. She had long realized her brain operated differently than others, but now she knew for sure: she had Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). With help from her neurotypical partner--now husband--Larry, mos...
Samuel Gershman, "What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition" (Princeton UP, 2021)
September 28, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutesAt the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition (Princeton UP, 2021) makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the in...
Martin Jay, “Pants on Fire: On Lying in Politics” (Open Agenda, 2021)
September 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourPants on Fire: On Lying in Politics is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and renowned intellectual historian Martin Jay, UC Berkeley. A thought-provoking book in dialogue format examining Martin Jay’s extensive research on lying in politics from Plato and St. Augustine to Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss which culminated in his book The Virtues of Mendacity. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He c...
Rachel Rojanski, "Yiddish in Israel: A History" (Indiana UP, 2020)
September 20, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourYiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in I...
J. P. M. Drury and S. A. M. Drury, "Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical" (Peter Lang, 2021)
September 16, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutesHamilton: An American Musical made its record-breaking Broadway debut in 2015—but the musical has reached far beyond typical Broadway audiences to pave a path into political discourse, pop culture, classroom curriculums, and the broader conversation about contemporary American politics. What led to this chain reaction of popularity, and how does it continue to influence these cultural and political dynamics? Jeffery and Sara Mehltretter Drury work to answer these questions using the tools of ...
Preserving Local Languages to Protect Cultural and Environmental Rights in Laos
September 16, 2021 08:00 - 27 minutesIn September-October 2021, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia. In the second episode, Dr Thushara Dibley talks with Professor Nick Enfield about how the field of linguistics intersects with human rights. They discuss some of the impacts that major hydro-electric dam projects in Laos have had on local communities, not just in changing day-to-day life, but in decreasing...
Tom G. Hoogervorst, "Language Ungoverned: Indonesia's Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911–1949" (Cornell UP, 2021)
September 15, 2021 08:00 - 37 minutesLanguage Ungoverned: Indonesia's Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911–1949 (Cornell UP, 2021) explores a fascinating archive of Sino-Malay texts – writings produced by the Chinese community in the Malay language – in Indonesia. It demonstrates the myriad ways in which the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia resorted to the press for their education, legal and medical advice, conflict resolution, and entertainment. Deftly depicting the linguistic choices made by these print entrepreneurs, Tom G. Hoogervo...
Alex Poole, "Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
September 09, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutesIn Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Alex Poole, professor of English at Western Kentucky University helps potential learners to negotiate the vagaries of learning a new language. In each chapter he details issues inherent in the learning process such as motivation, strategic decisions, and error analysis. How does language learning become enjoyable and not just a chore which one has to daily practice is the question he ...
William Duffy, "Beyond Conversation: Collaboration and the Production of Writing" (Utah State UP, 2021)
September 03, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn Beyond Conversation: Collaboration and the Production of Writing (Utah State UP, 2021), William Duffy revives the topic and connects it to the growing interest in collaboration within digital and materialist rhetoric to demonstrate that not only do the theory, pedagogy, and practice of collaboration need more study but there is also much to be learned from the doing of collaboration. Our conversation focuses on the processes that remain elusive during a collaborative project (and thus are...
Sarah Bunin Benor et al., "Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
September 02, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourEach summer, tens of thousands of American Jews attend residential camps, where they may see Hebrew signs, sing and dance to Hebrew songs, and hear a camp-specific hybrid language register called Camp Hebraized English, as in: “Let’s hear some ruach (spirit) in this chadar ochel (dining hall)!” Using historical and sociolinguistic methods, Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps, by Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and Sharon Avni (Rutgers University Press,...
Nicholas Harkness, "Glossolalia and the Problem of Language" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
August 24, 2021 08:00 - 36 minutesSpeaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, has long been a subject of curiosity as well as vigorous theological debate. A worldwide phenomenon that spans multiple Christian traditions, glossolalia is both celebrated as a supernatural gift and condemned as semiotic alchemy. For some it is mystical speech that exceeds what words can do, and for others it is mere gibberish, empty of meaning. At the heart of these differences is glossolalia’s puzzling relationship to language. Glossolalia an...
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, "Names of New York: Discovering the City's Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names" (Pantheon, 2021)
August 18, 2021 08:00 - 46 minutesGeographer and writer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro has a sharp appreciation for place, history, and the stories we tell to give meaning to our lives. All of these are present in his new book Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present and Future Through Its Place Names, published by Pantheon. Place names hold stories, Jelly-Schapiro argues, and Names of New York contains many narratives--from how Europeans garbled Native American place names to the story behind Dead Horse Bay to why New ...
Victor Ferreira, “Speaking and Thinking” (Open Agenda, 2021)
August 16, 2021 08:00 - 2 hoursSpeaking and Thinking is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Victor Ferreira, Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator at the Language Production Lab at the University of California at San Diego. This extensive conversation explores Victor Ferreira’s research which is focused on language production, especially with regard to grammar, lexical structure and speaker-hearer interaction, and his interests to incorporate computational and quantitative modell...
Maïa Ponsonnet, "Difference and Repetition in Language Shift to a Creole: The Expression of Emotions" (Routledge, 2019)
August 12, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn today’s global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle and addresses the following questions: What difference does using a new language make to the way speakers communicate in everyday life? Can the grammatical and lexical architectures of individual languages influence wha...
Helen Sword, "The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose" (U Chicago Press, 2016)
August 06, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesHelen Sword, writing champion, brings us into the word gym. Or maybe kitchen. Either way, The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (U Chicago Press, 2016) is a short, sharp introduction to great writing based around 5 principles: --use active verbs whenever possible; --favour concrete language over vague abstractions; --avoid long strings of prepositional phrases; --employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; --reduce your dependence on ...
Susan Gal and Judith T. Irvine, "Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
August 03, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourHow are peoples' ideas about languages, ways of speaking and expressive styles shaped by their social positions and values? How is difference, in language and in social life, made - and unmade? How and why are some differences persuasive as the basis for action, while other differences are ignored or erased? Written by two recognised authorities on language and culture, Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life (Cambridge UP, 2019) argues that ideological work of all kinds is ...
Iris Berent, "The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason about Human Nature" (Oxford UP, 2020)
August 02, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesDo newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happiness or anger? If they do, then how are our inborn thoughts and feelings encoded in our bodies? Could they persist after we die? Going all the way back to ancient Greece, human nature and the mind-body link are the topics of age-old scholarly debates. But laypeople also have strong opinions about such matters. Most people believe, for example, t...
Andre E. Johnson, "No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry Mcneal Turner" (U Mississippi Press, 2020)
July 26, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourNo Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (U Mississippi Press, 2020) is a history of the career of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915), specifically focusing on his work from 1896 to 1915. Drawing on the copious amount of material from Turner’s speeches, editorial, and open and private letters, Dr. Andre E. Johnson tells a story of how Turner provided rhetorical leadership during a period in which America defaulted on many of the rights and privilege...
Ellen Bialystok, “The Psychology of Bilingualism” (Open Agenda, 2021)
July 21, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe Psychology of Bilingualism is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Ellen Bialystok, Professor of Psychology at York University. Ellen Bialystok is a world-leading expert on the effects of bilingualism on cognitive processes across our lifespan. This extensive conversation examines how Ellen discovered differences in the development of essential cognitive and language abilities for bilingual children, the use of different brain networks by monolingual and bili...
Christina R. Foust et al., "What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics" (U Alabama Press, 2017)
July 16, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourRecent protests around the world (such as the Arab Spring uprisings and Occupy Wall Street movements) have drawn renewed interest to the study of social change and, especially, to the manner in which words, images, events, and ideas associated with protestors can "move the social." What Democracy Looks Like: The Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics (U Alabama Press, 2017) is an attempt to foster a more coherent understanding of social change among scholars of rhetoric and communica...
Yurou Zhong, "Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916-1958" (Columbia UP, 2019)
July 15, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1928 linguist Yuen Ren Chao had reason to celebrate. The Nationalist government had just recognized his system for writing Chinese, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, so he gleefully wrote (using the system) in his diary: "G.R. yii yu jeou yueh 26 ry gong buh le. Hooray!!!" (G.R. was officially announced on September 26. Hooray!!!). He was not the only one excited about the prospect of scraping Chinese characters either. In the global context of phonocentric dominance both the Nationalists and the Communist...
Richard Scholar, "Émigrés: French Words That Turned English" (Princeton UP, 2020)
July 15, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesEnglish has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases—such as à la mode, ennui, naïveté and caprice—lend English a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that would otherwise elude the language. Richard Scholar examines the continuing history of untranslated French words in English and asks what these words reveal about the fertile but fraught relationship that England and France have long shared and that now entangles English- and French-speaking ...
David Bellos, “Babbling Barbarians: How Translators Keep Us Civilized” (Open Agenda, 2021)
July 15, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourBabbling Barbarians: How Translators Keep Us Civilized is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Princeton University Professor David Bellos, author of the bestselling book, Is That A Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything, many fascinating features of language and translation are explored at length. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadsho...
Leonard Greenspoon, "Jewish Bible Translations: Personalities, Passions, Politics, Progress" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
July 09, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn his book Jewish Bible Translations: Personalities, Passions, Politics, Progress (Jewish Publication Society, 2020), Leonard Greenspoon is the first to examine thoroughly Jewish Bible translations from the third century BCE to our day. It is an overdue corrective of an important story that has been regularly omitted or downgraded in other histories of Bible translation. Examining a wide range of translations over twenty-four centuries, Greenspoon delves into the historical, cultural, lingui...
Nathan R. Johnson, "Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age" (U Alabama Press, 2020)
July 06, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesWe are now living in the richest age of public memory. From museums and memorials to the vast digital infrastructure of the internet, access to the past is only a click away. Even so, the methods and technologies created by scientists, espionage agencies, and information management coders and programmers have drastically delimited the ways that communities across the globe remember and forget our wealth of retrievable knowledge. In Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked...
Zoë Slatoff-Ponté, "Yogavataranam: The Translation of Yoga" (North Point Press, 2015)
July 01, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutesThe traditional Indian method of learning Sanskrit is through oral transmission, by first memorizing texts and then learning their meaning. The Western academic approach methodically teaches the alphabet, declensions, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary building. Zoë Slatoff-Ponté's Yogavataranam integrates the traditional and academic approaches for a full and practical experience of Sanskrit study. Yogavataranam: The Translation of Yoga (North Point Press, 2015) approaches language systematical...
Susan E. Kirtley, "Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
June 25, 2021 08:00 - 51 minutesIn her new book Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips (Ohio State Press, 2021) Susan Kirtley examines female-created comics that were nationally syndicated starting in the late 1970s-2010. Kirtley uncovers the understudied and developing history of these strips, defining and exploring the ramifications of this expression of women’s roles at a time of great change in history and in comic art. This impressive, engaging, and timely study illustrates how these comics express th...
Eviatar Zerubavel, "Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable" (Princeton UP, 2018)
June 15, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutesWhy is the term "openly gay" so widely used but "openly straight" is not? What are the unspoken assumptions behind terms like "male nurse," "working mom," and "white trash"? Offering a revealing and provocative look at the word choices we make every day without even realizing it, Taken for Granted exposes the subtly encoded ways we talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, social status, and more. In Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable (Princeton UP, 2018)...
Robert C. Bartlett, "Against Demagogues: What Aristophanes Can Teach Us about the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy" (U California Press, 2020)
June 10, 2021 08:00 - 44 minutesPolitical Theorist Robert Bartlett spoke with the New Books in Political Science podcast about two of his recent publications, which take on translating the work of two distinct classical thinkers, Aristotle and Aristophanes. In discussing these thinkers, we talked about two of Aristophanes’ earliest extant plays, The Acharnians and The Knights. We also discussed Aristotle’s text, The Art of Rhetoric. All three of these works focus on the interaction of the words spoken by a public individual...
Mona Simion, "Shifty Speech and Independent Thought: Epistemic Normativity in Context" (Oxford UP, 2021)
June 10, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourAt the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of language is a puzzle. First, it seems we don’t need less evidence for a claim that we know something if the practical importance of the knowledge claim shifts. Second, it seems we shouldn’t assert that we know something if we don’t. Third, it seems that if the practical importance of a knowledge claim shifts, we should back up our claim with more evidence. So is knowledge really insensitive to shifts in practical stakes? Or should the know...
Iain McGee, "Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing" (Equinox, 2018)
June 08, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesListen to this interview of Iain McGee, a PhD student in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of Bristol (UK), where he also teaches Applied Linguistics. We talk about his book Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing (Equinox, 2018), the paragraph as a break in the text, about the paragraph as a unit of the text, and about the ¶. Iain McGee : "Often writing instruction in classroom environments is readerless in terms of the actual text and in terms of who will engage...
James Fredal, "The Enthymeme: Syllogism, Reasoning, and Narrative in Ancient Greek Rhetoric" (Penn State UP, 2020)
May 31, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesJames Fredal is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The Ohio State University. The recipient of multiple awards for his work in rhetorical theory and history, Fredal is the author in 2006 of Rhetorical Action in Ancient Athens: Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes and now The Enthymeme: Syllogism, Reasoning and Narrative in Ancient Greek Rhetoric (Penn State UP, 2020). Central to rhetorical theory, the enthymeme is most often defined as a truncated syllogism. Suppress...
Ken Hyland, "Second Language Writing" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
May 18, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Ken Hyland, Professor of Applied Linguistics in Education at the University of East Anglia, UK. We talked about his book Second Language Writing (Cambridge UP, 2019), the importance of reflection to teaching, and about the importance of teaching to research, and about the importance of research to reflection. Interviewer : "I wonder whether second language writing isn't sometimes identifying itself too closely with language learning, and not–––well, it should be w...
Climate Denialism and Propaganda with Catriona McKinnon
May 18, 2021 08:00 - 33 minutesCatriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on climate ethics and environmental justice. Much of her recent work aims at addressing denialism about climate change. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Future of Truth project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.su...
Herbert Terrace, "Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can" (Columbia UP, 2019)
April 21, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesThrough discussion of his famous 1970s experiment alongside new research, in Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can (Columbia University Press, 2019), Herbert Terrace argues that, despite the failure of famous attempts to teach primates to speak, from these efforts we can learn something important: the missing link between non-linguistic and linguistic creatures is the ability to use words, not to form sentences. Situating language-learning as a capacity gained through conve...
Ralph Keyes, "The Hidden History of Coined Words" (Oxford UP, 2021)
April 15, 2021 08:00 - 55 minutesSuccessful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likel...
Joshua Gunn, "Political Perversion: Rhetorical Aberration in the Time of Trumpeteering" (U of Chicago Press, 2020)
April 14, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourWhen Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, a perversion of the highest office in the land. In his bold, innovative book, Political Perversion: Rhetorical Aberration in the Time of Trumpeteering (University of Chicago Press, 2020), rhetorician Joshua Gunn argues that this “mean-spirited turn” in American politics (of which Trump is the paragon) is best understood as a structural perversion in our common culture, on a co...
Political Rhetoric and Demagoguery with Jennifer Mercieca
April 13, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutesJennifer Mercieca is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. She is the author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. You can follow her on Twitter: @jenmercieca. The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Future of Truth project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooks...
Ramsey McGlazer, "Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress" (Fordham UP, 2020)
April 07, 2021 04:00 - 1 hourRamsey McGlazer's Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (Fordham University Press, 2020), traces the ways in which a group of modernist cultural practitioners (thinkers, politicians, artists, poets, novelists, and filmmakers) across varied linguistic and cultural contexts ((Italian, English, Irish, and Brazilian) resisted certain notions of education perceived as “progressive”. At the heart of this remarkable study, pulses a nexus of issues that are of interest to a...
Christopher Joby, "The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan" (Brill, 2020)
April 01, 2021 04:00 - 51 minutesIn The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900): A Cultural and Sociolinguistic Study of Dutch as a Contact Language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (Brill, 2020), Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of the knowledge and use of the Dutch language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. For most of this period, the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to trade with Japan. Using the analytical tool of language process, this book explores the nature and consequences of contact between Dutch and...
Joan Turner, "On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
March 31, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Joan Turner, author of On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing (Bloomsbury Academic 2018). We talk about writers, writing, writers writing, unwritten subtexts, and written text. Interviewer: "What do you see as the step which writing practitioners can take in the direction of their discipline-based colleagues, and what's the step that researchers can take toward writing practice?" Joan Turner: "Well, obviously, it has to be something that has to b...
Karen Stollznow, "On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
March 24, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourWhether framed as complaints about cancel culture or as increased awareness of prejudice, stories about offensive language are common in our daily news cycle. In On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present (Cambridge UP, 2020), linguist Karen Stollznow explores the history of language that offends, including talk about race and ethnicity, gender, religion, mental health, physical appearance, and age. Her book tells the origin story of how terms come to have the power to offend. I...
Kamran Khan, "Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK" (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019)
March 23, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourCitizenship is acquired and constructed through various mechanisms, including language tests, that require individuals to demonstrate a sufficient national identity. For some recent migrants, acquiring citizenship and passing rigorous language testing still is not enough to feel like they belong. Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019) provides valuable context for how language and sociolinguistics impacts citizenship in both official...