Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Han Kang, published 2/6/2023 in The New Yorker Most linguists don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the voice. I spend more time trying to get people to forget about voice. Language doesn’t have to be spoken; sign … Continue reading →

by China Miéville (2011) In a recent essay in Aeon, Nikhil Mahant points out (I think correctly) that most alien languages imagined in sci-fi aren’t really all that different from existing human languages. ‘As a philosopher of language, I find … Continue reading →

by Deborah Eisenberg We read a series of stories this semester that took up the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign—the most important feature of language, according to Saussure—and troubled it in various ways. I’m glad we ended with ‘The Third … Continue reading →

by Preston L. Allen This is our longest reading, and the most disturbing one, at least for me. But we had a well-attended, insightful discussion, and I came away appreciating this book in new ways—so thanks, as always. Emily took … Continue reading →

by Ted Chiang We had such a great discussion on Friday. A friend of mine walked by our table and told me later that he could tell it was a good discussion just from seeing us. But I had trouble … Continue reading →

by Jorge Luis Borges We had a lovely, lively and stimulating discussion of ‘Funes the Memorious.’ Our edition is only six pages long and I felt like we could have kept talking about it for another hour at least. Here’s … Continue reading →

by Wendy Nikel ‘Whale Fall’ was an experiment for me this semester. I came across it over winter break, read the first few paragraphs, and saw that it was about a person talking to a whale via some kind of … Continue reading →

by Mary Shelley Frankenstein is often called the first sci-fi novel. For this class we don’t read the most sci-fi-heavy parts of the book: we skip over Victor’s education in scientific theories, his construction and animation of the creature, his … Continue reading →

By Octavia Butler ‘Speech Sounds’ is all about language. It’s a wonderful story for this class because it allows us to peel back layer after layer of the extremely complex question: What is language? It frames this question by asking, … Continue reading →

By Ted Chiang I’ve taught ‘Story of Your Life’ in many different ways over the years, depending on the focus of the course and the interests of the students. I wrote down a bunch of thoughts here, so it’s a … Continue reading →