Interviews with Scholars of Language about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/politics-society/language/
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 16 days 9 hours 28 minutes
Alexander Maxwell, “Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language, and Accidental Nationalism” (Tauris Academic Studies, 2009)
On 1 January 1993 Slovakia became an independent nation. According to conventional Slovak nationalist history that event was the culmination of a roughly thousand year struggle. Alexander Maxwell argues quite differently in his book Choosing Slovakia: ...
Alexander Clark and Shalom Lappin, “Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
In linguistics, if a book is ever described as a “must read for X”, it generally means that (i) it is trenchantly opposed to whatever X does and (ii) X will completely ignore it. Alexander Clark and Shalom Lappin,
Margaret Thomas, “Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics” (Routledge, 2011)
In the preface to Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics (Routledge, 2011), devoted to short but attentively researched biographical sketches of major figures in the language sciences, Margaret Thomas compares the task of compiling it with that...
Tore Janson, “The History of Languages: An Introduction” (Oxford UP, 2012)
It’s a sobering thought that, but for the spread of English, I wouldn’t be able to do these interviews. In particular, I don’t speak Swedish, and I’m not going to try to speak Latin to a world expert on the subject. Fortunately for my purposes,
Jeanne Fahnestock, “Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion” (Oxford UP, 2011)
A thing I enjoy about this job is being encouraged to read books that unexpectedly turn out to be profoundly relevant to my own interests. Jeanne Fahnestock‘s new book, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion (Oxford University Press,
Robert F. Barsky and Noam Chomsky, “Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism” (MIT Press, 2011)
Zellig Harris’s name is famous in linguistics primarily for his early work on transformational grammar and his influence on his most famous student, Noam Chomsky. However, much of his linguistic work has since fallen into comparative obscurity.
Julie Sedivy and Greg Carlson, “Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You” (Wiley, 2011)
We’ve never been in a more crowded marketplace, with more corporations shouting for our attention and custom. Yet this choice is an illusion, as detailed in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You (Wiley, 2011).
Theo van Leeuwen, “The Language of Colour: An Introduction” (Routledge, 2011)
Theo van Leeuwen comes to the academic discipline of social semiotics – the study of how meanings are conveyed – from his previous career as a film and TV producer. His interest in the makings of visual communication is hardly surprising.
Jonathan Green, “Green’s Dictionary of Slang” (Hodder Education, 2010)
Over the last thirty years, Jonathon Green has established himself as a major figure in lexicography, specialising in English slang. During this time he has accumulated a database of over half a million citations for more than 100,
Keith Gilyard, “True to the Language Game: African American Discourse, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy” (Routledge, 2011)
In the preface to this book, Keith Gilyard describes his career as 30 years of roaming the areas of rhetoric, composition, sociolinguistics, creative writing, applied linguistics, education theory, literary study, history,