New Books In Language

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Nicole Holliday. Dr. Holliday is a sociophonetician and Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkely in the United States. Today, Dr. Holliday discusses her 2023 paper “Complex Variation in the Construction of a Sociolinguistic Persona: the Case of Vice President Kamala Harris” in which Dr. Holliday analyses VP Harris’ linguistic identity on the 2020 U.S. presidential election debate stage. In the paper, Dr. Holliday examines Harris’ construction of identity through language features and discusses the overt and covert prestige that those features represent to different audiences.For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Amie Souza Reilly bought an old house in the suburbs. She had just gotten remarried and was looking forward to a new start with her new husband and her six-year-old son. But immediately after moving in, the next-door neighbors began a crusade to push them out. The two brothers followed her, peered in her windows, stood in her yard, trapped her inside her car. As they broke boundary after suburban boundary, she found herself implicated in their violence. Human/Animal merges personal narrative and cultural criticism to unleash the complicated relationship between instinct and action, violence and regret. This bestiary-in-essays wrestles American colonialism, horror films, feminism, and gender studies to confront the intrusive neighbors the author could not. Ultimately, this book asks larger questions about proximity, care, and the line between human and animal. Illustrated with the author's own sketches, Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025) grapples not only with Reilly's

Tom joins us to discuss his book Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason (Bloomsbury, 2023). Western philosophy has often claimed for itself not just a distinct sphere of knowledge, but a distinct form of communication, set against ordinary speech. For some philosophers, authentic philosophizing demands a specific manner of speaking or writing, adoption of which enables one to gesture toward truths that propositional speech will never grasp. Drawing on a variety of thinkers – Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, Fichte, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weil, Foucault, and Irigaray – Sutherland argues this emphasis on the form of philosophical communication can function as an exclusionary mechanism, determining who is deemed capable of speaking philosophically. We discuss Plato, Nietzsche, Weil, Laruelle and applied philosophy in Hadot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Isabella Andreini, Letters, ed. and trans. Paola De Santo and Caterina Mongiat Farina. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Iter Press of the University of Toronto, 2023. Winner of the Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition (2024) from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender  Welcome! My guest is Professor Paola Da Santo, Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Georgia, who has some fascinating things to say about Isabella Andreini (1562–1604), an actress, poet, and playwright renowned for her literary and theatrical skill.   Acclaimed as "la divina Isabella," Andreini toured Italy and France as part of the Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi. Letters (Iter Press, 2023) is a collection of epistles she wrote written in fictional, anonymous, male, and female voices, a “hermaphroditic” alternation of gender unlike any that had been seen in letter writing to that time. Andreini remade the humanistic epistolary genre into a distinctive fusion of literary and dramatic performanc

We often take the meaning of signs for granted but that's far from the case in a linguistically and culturally diverse society. The instruction to "Swim between the flags!" can be interpreted in multiple ways - some of which may actually heighten rather than reduce risk. In this episode of Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Agnes Bodis talks to Dr Masaki Shibata from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Dr Shibata’s researches beach signs in Australia and how they are understood by beachgoers and what consequences this has on beach safety.For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking—the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. This almost entirely forgotten practice, used by historical figures ranging from Elizabeth I and her spies to Japanese samurai lords, was an everyday activity for centuries, across cultures, borders, and social classes. In Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter (MIT Press, 2025), Jana Dambrogio and Dr. Daniel Starza Smith, experts who have pioneered the field over the last ten years, tell the fascinating story of letterlocking within epistolary history, drawing on real historical examples from all over the world.Fully illustrated with more than 300 images and diagrams, including a dictionary of sixty technical terms and concepts, Letterlocking describes the essential precepts of the practice and provides sources of p

Who benefits and who loses when emotions are described in particular ways? How do metaphors such as "hold on" and "let go" affect people's emotional experiences? Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel (Oxford UP, 2019), written by neuroscientist-turned-literary scholar Laura Otis, draws on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology to challenge popular attempts to suppress certain emotions. This interdisciplinary book breaks taboos by exploring emotions in which people are said to "indulge" self-pity, prolonged crying, chronic anger, grudge-bearing, bitterness, and spite. By focusing on metaphors for these emotions in classic novels, self-help books, and popular films, Banned Emotions exposes their cultural and religious roots. Examining works by Dante, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Forster, and Woolf in parallel with Bridesmaids, Fatal Attraction, and Who Moved My Cheese?, Banned Emotions traces pervasive patterns in the ways emotions are represented that can make people so ashamed

This is the first Syriac reader for the New Testament. It guides the reader through the Syriac New Testament Peshitta, glossing the uncommon words and parsing difficult word forms. It is designed for two groups of people. First, for students learning Syriac after a years’ worth of study this series provides the material to grow in reading ability from the primary texts. Second, this series is designed for scholars, linguists, theologians, and curious lay people looking to refresh their Syriac, or use them in preparation for their work of study, and teaching. The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible: The New Testament (Gorgias Press, 2023) immerses the reader in the biblical texts in order to build confidence reading Classical Syriac as quickly as possible. To achieve this, all uncommon words that occur fewer than 25 times in the Syriac New Testament are glossed as footnotes. This enables the beginner or intermediate student to continue reading every passage unhindered. Therefore, this book complements traditional language

While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit the region together in a common intellectual enterprise that encompassed religion, philosophy, historiography, political theory, art, and literature. Literacy in Classical Chinese set the stage for the adaptation of Chinese characters into ways of writing non-Chinese languages like Vietnamese and Korean, which differ dramatically from Chinese in vocabularies and grammatical structures.Because of its unique status in the modern world, myths and misunderstandings about Chinese characters abound. Where does this writing system, so different in form and function from alphabetic writing, come from? How does it really work? How did it come to be used to write non-Chinese languages? And why has

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with Associate Professor Su Kyong Isakson (Community College of Baltimore County, USA) about her 2018 paper, The Case for Heritage ASL Instruction for Hearing Heritage Signers. The conversation focuses on heritage signers, differentiated instruction, and sign language interpreter education. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded outwards, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen? In Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (HarperCollins, 2025), acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. Travelling over the steppe and the silk roads, she follows in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread their words far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists, archaeologists and linguists racing to reanimate this lost world. What they have learned has vital lessons fo

An enthralling tour of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages Languages and cultures are becoming increasingly homogenous, with the resulting loss of a rich linguistic tapestry reflecting unique perspectives and ways of life.  Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages (Princeton University Press, 2025) tells the stories of the world’s rare and vanishing languages, revealing how each is a living testament to human resilience, adaptability, and the perennial quest for identity. Taking readers on a captivating journey of discovery, Lorna Gibb explores the histories of languages under threat or already extinct as well as those in resurgence, shedding light on their origins, development, and distinctive voices. She travels the globe—from Australia and Finland to India, the Canary Islands, Namibia, Scotland, and Paraguay—showing how these languages are not mere words and syntax but keepers of diverse worldviews, sites of ethnic conflict, and a means for finding surprising commonalities. Readers

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr Christian Ilbury about his new book, Researching Language and Digital Communication: A Student Guide, published by Routledge. The book is an introduction to research on language and digital communication, providing an overview of relevant sociolinguistic concepts, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches commonly used in the field. It’s a practical guide designed to help students develop independent research projects on language and digital communication. Christian is a Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh whose research explores the social meaning of linguistic variation. His research specifically focuses on the interrelation of digital culture and language variation and change with a concentration on the linguistic and digital practices of young people. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwor

What makes one sentence easy to read and another a slog that demands re-reading? Where do you put information you want readers to recall? Drawing on cognitive neuroscience, psychology and psycholinguistics, Writing for the Reader’s Brain (Cambridge University Press, 2025) provides a practical, how-to guide on how to write for your reader. It introduces the five 'Cs' of writing - clarity, continuity, coherence, concision, and cadence - and demonstrates how to use these to bring your writing to life. Dr. Yellowlees Douglas is the founder of ReadersBrain Academy and has spent over twenty-five years teaching writing to everyone from professors to freshmen. This interview was conducted by Renee Hale, who holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files, a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing the joy of new perspectives with listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a prem

Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling Ancient and Modern Vocabularies (Gorgias Press, 2024) publishes the papers presented at the round table on Syriac lexicology and lexicography held at the 13th Symposium Syriacum (Paris, 2022). An international group of scholars approaches this field from several new angles and shows how much remains to be done, from the creation of new lexical databases to the update of previously existing ones and the study of new lexica that have been recently discovered. The multifocal approach adopted by the contributions to this volume testifies to the richness of this field, which offers several avenues for further inquiry. The volume is designed for scholars in Syriac, as well as for those interested in the contacts between Syriac and its neighboring languages from the past and the present, such as Greek, Arabic, Iranian languages and Neo-Aramaic varieties. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review. Mara Nicosia is a British Academy Newton International Fellow at

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Lauren Gawne, about cross-cultural variation in gesture use. In this episode, Brynn and Lauren discuss a paper that Lauren wrote in 2024 with co-author Dr. Kensey Cooperrider entitled “Emblems: Meaning at the interface of language and gesture”. Brynn and Lauren talk all about how emblems are different to gestures, cultural uses of emblems, emoji, and how emblems might be changing in the digital age. Discussions in this episode include references to Lauren’s book Gesture: A Slim Guide (Oxford UP, 2025), the video episode on gesture that Lingthusiasm made and Gretchen McCulloch’s book Because Internet. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Between the study of specific languages and the philosophy of language lies what Ryan Nefdt calls a “Goldilocks zone” of theoretical issues related to language. In The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Nefdt introduces and explores the elements in this zone, including different theories of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and differing views of how language evolved, which languages are possible, and what defines language. Nefdt, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, shows where dominant linguistic theories, such as Chomskian syntactic theory and truth-conditional semantics, fit in a generalized framework where a key theoretical dimension is the role of social context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Written by a self-taught grammarian, A Few Words About Words (Beaufort Books, 2021) offers an accessible and engaging guide to mastering the English language. A simple mistake, like writing your instead of you’re or there instead of they’re, can make the difference between winning or losing an opportunity. A missing comma can spark a PR disaster, while a well-crafted sentence can be remembered for generations. However, even native English speakers often struggle with the language. Based on Joe Diorio’s widely circulated and beloved newsletter of the same title, A Few Words About Words distills over 30 years of witty, insightful observations on the common—and not-so-common—grammar mistakes we all make. If you’ve ever wondered whether also should come before or after a verb, debated preventive vs. preventative, or questioned the true importance of the Oxford comma, this book offers clarity and reassurance. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy interviews Joe Diorio about writing and grammar. Ibrahim Fawzy is a literar

Have you ever heard of Lingua Napoletana or Neapolitan, the language of Naples? In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks to Massimiliano Canzanella, a Neapolitan language activist. The conversation delves into the history of the Neapolitan language and the interplay of culture, race, and national identity that have contributed to the oppression of the language and its speakers. Massimiliano also discusses his own journey as a language activist and the movement to preserve Neapolitan, including his novels, Set Your Soul To It and You Don’t Say, which were the first ever to be written entirely in Neapolitan (and also available in English translation) For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Ian Rapley’s Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880-1945 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is a sociopolitical history of the “planned” language of Esperanto in the Japanese Empire. Esperanto was invented in the nineteenth century to address the problem of international communication. This was an issue of great and growing interest to various groups within the burgeoning Japanese Empire, and Rapley shows that Japanese Esperanto aficionados and advocates could be found working both with the League of Nations and the Soviet Union, and were active in cities and the countryside working through questions of language, identity, modernity, and communication through and around the medium of Esperanto. Green Star Japan is thus not just a (socio)linguistic history, it is a book about what it means to be modern and how people make sense of their place in a changing world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooks