
New Books in Language
Interviews with Scholars of Language about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
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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,

Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith, "Letterlocking: The Hidden History of the Letter" (MIT Press, 2025)
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

Laura Otis, "Banned Emotions: How Metaphors Can Shape What People Feel" (Oxford UP, 2019)
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

Timothy A. Lee, "The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible: The New Testament" (Gorgias Press, 2023)
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 materia

Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
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 languag
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 instruct