New Books in Language

The ‘ideological odd couple’ of Robert George and Cornel West jointly authored a statement defending free speech on campus and elsewhere. Find out why. Robert George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and the founding director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. His research focuses on issues in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law.The "Why We Argue" podcast is produced by the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut as part of the Humility and Conviction in Public Life project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Contemporary scholarship on the Mughal empire has generally ignored the role Sanskrit played in imperial political and literary projects. However, in Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016), Audrey Truschke, Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University–Newark, demonstrates that Sanskrit was central to the process of royal self-definition. She documents how Brahman and Jain intellectuals were working closely with Persian-speaking Islamic elite around the cultural framework of the central royal court. These projects often revolved around cross-cultural textual production and translation, putting Sanskrit and Persian works in conversation. The production of Mughal-backed texts, and the literary reflection or silence about Brahman and Jain participation reveals unexplored horizons for understanding South Asia imperial history. In our conversation we discussed the dynamics of the Mughal court, the influential leaders Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, Persian translation of Sanskrit epics, the integration of Sanskrit materials into imperial knowledge, the end of Sanskrit at the Mughal court, and the tricky reception of contested histories in contemporary India. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

The unprecedented crime of the 1994 Rwandan genocide demanded an unconventional legal response. After failed attempts by the international legal system to efficiently handle legal cases stemming from the genocide, Rwandans decided to take matters into their own hands and reinstate Gacaca law, which had been the sole legal system in Rwanda prior to colonization. Gacaca, a Kinyarwanda word referring to a type of grass or traditional lawn, is also a metonym for place and mediation. Gacaca law allows perpetrators and victims to resolve their differences before the community, and a panel of eminent persons, inyangamugayo. Gacaca seeks not simply to punish crime but to repair the social fabric rent by crime. In his book Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case Of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law (Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2015), Telesphore Ngarambe uses a fusion of cultural and translational studies, with emphasis placed on cultural contextualization, to make a unique contribution to the study of Gacaca law. Ngarambe argues that as law is embedded in culture and society, of which language is an integral part, legal language of necessity reflects the culture and society in which it is embedded. Rwanda’s three official languages mean that Gacaca law, articulated in Kinyarwanda, must now also find expression in the colonial languages with which it coexists, namely English and French. Though modern Gacaca law has come in for criticism, it has also been hailed as a model for indigenous responses to crimes of mass violence in Africa and other parts of the world. Mireille Djenno is the African Studies Librarian at Indiana University. She can be reached at mdjenno@indiana.edu.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

As described by Dovid Katz, Yiddish is an extraordinarily multifaceted language: a language that is at once acclaimed as sacred and dismissed as deficient, profoundly connected to centuries of religious and cultural history yet marketed superficially, held to be dying out yet booming at an unprecedented rate. Yiddish and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) charts the fascinating, complex course of the language, and discusses its development, spread, displacement, and how it has been threatened by pressures towards assimilation in many diverse ways. As we discuss, this history illustrates and challenges important ideas about the interplay between language, power and identity. Chris Cummins (www.crcummins.com, c.r.cummins@gmail.com) is a lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Matthew Pauly’s Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934 (University of Toronto Press, 2014) offers a detailed investigation of the language policy–officially termed Ukrainization–that was introduced in Ukraine during the formative years of the Soviet Union. Out of a massive amount of archival records and documents, Pauly reconstructs a complex and controversial process that happened to have significant consequences for the subsequent decades. In his research, Pauly presents Ukrainization as a process that impacts multiple fields, outlining the connection between the nation formation and language/cultural policy. The areas that appear to have experienced changes as a result of Ukrainization include educational institutions, political establishment, economy, ethnic groups. Significant attention is given to education and pedagogy. Breaking the Tongue in much detail discusses the role of educators in the process of the Ukrainian culture popularization. While accounting for the policy decisions made and promoted by the Communist leaders, Pauly intriguingly brings to light the contributions which could be attributed to children. On the one hand, for obvious reasons children were the main target of Ukrainization; on the other hand, children through the involvement in youth organization were actively participating in the dissemination of the Ukrainian language and culture. Through the twelve chapters that constitute the research, Pauly observes the trajectory of Ukrainization: its enthusiastic implementation was followed by introducing limitations and restrictions. According to Pauly, Ukrainization could go as far as the Communists leaders would allow: the revival of the interest in the Ukrainian Studies in Ukraine, although it may seem and sound paradoxical, presented potential threats to the solidifying Soviet Union. Breaking the Tongue documents how ardent and genuine supporters of the development of the Ukrainian language and culture were subsequently persecuted being accused of sabotage and nationalism. The final part, “Biographical and Informational sketches,” presents information about the activists who became victims of the Soviet repression: it is a reminder of the controversial language policy as well as manipulative strategies employed by the Soviet authorities in the process of producing programs that would secure the stability of the Soviet Union. Matthew Pauly is an associate professor in the Department of History, Michigan State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Jennifer Glaser, Associate Professor of English and comparative literature and an affiliate faculty member in Judaic studies and womens, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, examines how racial ventriloquism became a hallmark of Jewish-American fiction. She offers a nuanced analysis of this practice of Jewish writers speaking for or as other minorities. This book is a compelling contribution, bringing Jewish cultural studies into conversation with critical race theory in innovative and provocative ways. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

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 they can’t get anything right. And when it comes to language, it’s clear that teenagers are special. But though anecdotal evidence abounds, just how special, and in what ways, has rarely been the subject of detailed empirical research. Sali Tagliamonte’s book Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is the first step towards filling that gap. Using a variety of data sources and approaches, the book zooms in on some of the “funky features” that set teen language apart. In this interview, we discuss several of the words and structures featured in the book: “just”, “stuff”, “weird”, “awesome”, and the much-maligned “like.” We also discuss the special ecological niche that teen language has in the process of language change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Recent controversies surrounding sexual harassment and assault on college campuses have sparked heated discussions surrounding the everyday experiences of women on college campuses. Female students and faculty members have often felt at odds with their institutions and other members of their workplaces when sexual harassment and assault enter the work environment. What is one to do when experiencing gender-based discrimination in the academic workplace? Ellen Mayock in her recent book Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) seeks to put a name to the phenomenon that many women in academia face as well as provide solutions to institutional failures that allow for these experiences of harassment and assault to occur. Drawing upon feminist theory, linguistics, and the power of personal narratives, Mayock discusses how gender shrapnel occurs in the academic workplace. The later chapters of the book provide very tangible solutions to gender shrapnel that individuals and institutions can embark upon in order to curb the instances of gender shrapnel in academia. Ellen Mayock is currently the Ernest Williams II Professor of Romance Languages within the Department of Romance Languages at Washington and Lee University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

According to the blurb, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press, 2016) “explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediates social justice in liberal democracies.” This is true, but tends to understate the force of the arguments being put forward here. Ingrid Piller presents a powerful case for how language is variously overlooked or misunderstood as a factor that entrenches disadvantage and inequality in a globalized society. She argues that discrimination based on language persists, often justified by appeal to the false premise that individuals exercise complete control over their own linguistic repertoires, and reinforced by tacit assumptions embedded in our cultural practices. In this interview, we talk about some of the relevant domains, and ask how a better-informed approach to linguistic diversity can potentially help in addressing persistent forms of social injustice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

From its opening fragment on “Fragments” to its “Possibly dolorous tropical lyrical coda,” Simon Critchley‘s new book is a pleasure to hold in the hand and the mind. ABC of Impossibility (Univocal Publishing, 2015) is a collection of fragments and a catalog of “impossible objects”: poetry, America, emptiness, indirection, money, and more. Thoughts and jokes and quotes and small essays ranging from one line to several pages are arranged in a sequence that plays with unusual juxtapositions and acts as a form of “counterpoint,” riffing on and playing off of the work of Pessoa and Augustine and Rousseau and Blake and Heidegger and others. This is a thoughtful and playful book about time, and the sea, and humor, and loss, and slavery, and the importance of unlearning. Highly recommended! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language