New Books in Language and Translation

Latest Episodes:

Samuel Gershman, "What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition" (Princeton UP, 2021) Sep 28, 2021

Show notes

At 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 inevitable consequences of a brain optimized for efficient inference and decision making within the constraints of time, energy, and memory--in other words, data and resource limitations. Framing human intelligence in terms of these constraints, Samuel Gershman shows how a deeper computational logic underpins the "stupid" errors of human cognition.

Embarking on a journey across psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and economics, Gershman presents unifying principles that govern human intelligence. First, inductive bias: any system that makes inferences based on limited data must constrain its hypotheses in some way before observing data. Second, approximation bias: any system that makes inferences and decisions with limited resources must make approximations. Applying these principles to a range of computational errors made by humans, Gershman demonstrates that intelligent systems designed to meet these constraints yield characteristically human errors.

Examining how humans make intelligent and maladaptive decisions, What Makes Us Smart delves into the successes and failures of cognition.

Robert Tosswill is a student the Master of Logic (MoL) program at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Martin Jay, “Pants on Fire: On Lying in Politics” (Open Agenda, 2021) Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

Pants 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 can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rachel Rojanski, "Yiddish in Israel: A History" (Indiana UP, 2020) Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

Yiddish 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 Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

J. P. M. Drury and S. A. M. Drury, "Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical" (Peter Lang, 2021) Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

Hamilton: 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 rhetorical criticism by bringing together a collection of essays in their book, Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical(Peter Lang, 2021). This volume is part of the Frontiers in Political Communication series at Peter Lang Publishers—a book series that aims to produce timely scholarship at the very cutting edge of political communication, emphasizing “how citizens, governments, and the media interact is the communication process.” Dr. Sara Mehltretter Drury is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric, and the Director of Democracy & Public Discourse at Wabash College. Dr. Jeffery Mehltretter Drury is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Wabash College. Their combined expertise has helped to produce an edited volume that invites the reader to join the deep analysis of the musical Hamilton.

The book is structured around three major themes in the realm of rhetorical criticism: public memory, rhetoric and social identity, rhetoric of democracy and social change. Each section of the book presents multiple interpretations of the musical in order to present new perspectives in understanding Hamilton’s relevance to politics and culture. Public memory centers on the narrative concepts of Hamilton and how it addresses American myths regarding the American Dream and the foundation of America. Rhetoric and Social Identity approaches race and gender within Hamilton, including the juxtaposition of portraying the nation’s white founders as people of color on stage. This section examines the musical’s accessibility to communities across America to discuss both historical and modern-day political conflicts. Rhetoric of Democracy and Social Change evaluates Hamilton’s influence in contemporary politics in how it normalizes political debate by humanizing historical political figures. By utilizing academic theories and analyzing multifaceted aspects of the musical, Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: An American Musical welcomes a variety of arguments to encourage its readers to engage in the ideas, arguments, and representation of American history in a contemporary context.

Shaina Boldt assisted with this podcast.

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Preserving Local Languages to Protect Cultural and Environmental Rights in Laos Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

In 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 interethnic interactions, thereby eroding multiculturalism and multilingualism. In disrupting local indigenous exchanges, Professor Enfield argues that large development projects risk impeding the transmission of significant cultural knowledge, including traditional knowledge of biodiversity and environmental sustainability. The study of languages thus becomes a tool for understanding a broader set of human rights, from cultural to environmental rights.

About Nick Enfield:

Nick Enfield is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, and the Sydney Centre for Language Research. He is head of a Research Excellence Initiative on The Crisis of Post-Truth Discourse. His research on language, culture, cognition and social life is based on long term field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His recent books include The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: A Concise Typological Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Nick has published widely in linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science venues, and has written for The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, and Science. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Society of New South Wales, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom G. Hoogervorst, "Language Ungoverned: Indonesia's Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911–1949" (Cornell UP, 2021) Sep 15, 2021

Show notes

Language 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. Hoogervorst paints a rich portrait of the social life of this community as well as the articulation of their aspirations, anxieties and concerns that were expressed in creative use of multiple languages. This vernacular press brought Chinese-inflected Malay to the fore as the language of popular culture and everyday life, subverting the official Malay of the Dutch authorities. Through his readings of Sino-Malay print culture published between the 1910s and 1940s, Hoogervorst highlights the inherent value of this vernacular Malay as a language of the people.

In this episode, we discuss the joys of reading for its own sake, distinctions between vernacular and standardized Malay, migrant experiences in language use and the importance of asking good questions when tackling corpuses of texts in the digital humanities.

Tom G. Hoogervorst is a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). He is a historical linguist whose interests center on the Indian Ocean World and the author of Southeast Asia in the Ancient Indian Ocean World.

Faizah Zakaria is assistant professor of history at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. You can find her website at www.faizahzak.com or reach her on Twitter @laurelinarien.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alex Poole, "Learning a Foreign Language: Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) Sep 09, 2021

Show notes

In 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 poses to himself and the readers. He emphasizes the need to have realistic expectations and analyses age and the acquisition of a new language. The text focuses on first time learners and its amenable style makes it ideal for high school and college students as well as independent learners.

Minni Sawhney is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

William Duffy, "Beyond Conversation: Collaboration and the Production of Writing" (Utah State UP, 2021) Sep 03, 2021

Show notes

In 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 difficult to teach in a classroom or recognized by the academic ecosystem), the risky accounts that live alongside collaborations, and a few ideas to think about and apply the next time you collaborate.

Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Bunin Benor et al., "Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps" (Rutgers UP, 2020) Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

Each 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, 2020), explains how camp directors and staff came to infuse Hebrew in creative ways and how their rationales and practices have evolved from the early 20th century to today.

Some Jewish leaders worry that Camp Hebraized English impedes Hebrew acquisition, while others recognize its power to strengthen campers’ bonds with Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people. Hebrew Infusion explores these conflicting ideologies, showing how hybrid language can serve a formative role in fostering religious, diasporic communities. The insightful analysis and engaging descriptions of camp life will appeal to anyone interested in language, education, or American Jewish culture.

Interviewees:

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and courtesy Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California.

Jonathan Krasner is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Education Research at Brandeis University.

Sharon Avni is Professor of Literacy and Linguistics at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and a Research Associate at the Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicholas Harkness, "Glossolalia and the Problem of Language" (U Chicago Press, 2021) Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

Speaking 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 and the Problem of Language(U Chicago Press, 2021) investigates speaking in tongues in South Korea, where it is practiced widely across denominations and congregations. Nicholas Harkness shows how the popularity of glossolalia in Korea lies at the intersection of numerous, often competing social forces, interwoven religious legacies, and spiritual desires that have been amplified by Christianity’s massive institutionalization. As evangelicalism continues to spread worldwide, Glossolalia and the Problem of Language analyzes one of its most enigmatic practices while marking a major advancement in our understanding of the power of language and its limits.

Amir Lehman is an MA student in linguistics at UCL.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

New Books in Language and Translation

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected