404 episodes

Interviews with Scholars of Language about their New Books
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New Books in Language Marshall Poe

    • Ciencia

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

    Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age" (MIT Press, 2024)

    The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? 
    In The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024), Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day. Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe. An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.
    Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University and a Guggenheim Fellow.
    Caleb Zakarin is Editor at the New Books Network.
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    • 1 hr 43 min
    Denise Kripper, "Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature" (Routledge, 2023)

    Denise Kripper, "Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature" (Routledge, 2023)

    Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature (Routledge, 2023) offers unique insights into the role of the translator in today’s globalized world, exploring Latin American literature featuring translators and interpreters as protagonists in which prevailing understandings of the act of translation are challenged and upended. It looks to the fictional turn as a fruitful source of critical inquiry in translation studies, showcasing the potential for recent Latin American novels and short stories in Spanish to shed light on the complex dynamics and conditions under which translators perform their task. 
    Kripper unpacks how the study of these works reveals translation not as an activity with communication as its end goal but rather as a mediating and mediated process shaped by translators’ unique manipulations and motivations and the historical and cultural contexts in which they work. In exploring the fictional representations of translators, the book also outlines pedagogical approaches and offers discussion questions for the implementation of translators’ narratives in translation, language, and literature courses.
    Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and academic based in Egypt. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, and disability studies.
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    • 37 min
    Interpreting Service Provision is Good Value for Money

    Interpreting Service Provision is Good Value for Money

    Ingrid Piller speaks with Jim Hlavac about interpreting to bridge language barriers.
    About 5% of the Australian population do not speak English or do not speak it well. In this conversation, Dr Jim Hlavac, an experienced interpreter and interpreting trainer, explains how professional interpreters, language mediators, and language brokers help to support fair and equitable access to healthcare and other forms of social participation.
    We explore how interpreting works in practice in a hospital setting: who gets to interpret? How is the need for an interpreter identified? Who pays? What is the role of policy vis-à-vis bottom-up practice? Is the process the same for all languages?
    The conversation closes with the million-dollar question: will AI take interpreters’ jobs?
    For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. 
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    • 42 min
    Erin Elizabeth Greer, "Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

    Erin Elizabeth Greer, "Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

    The ideal of ‘conversation’ recurs in modern thought as a symbol and practice central to ethics, democratic politics, and thinking itself. Interweaving readings of fiction and philosophy in a ‘conversational’ style inspired by Stanley Cavell, Fiction, Philosophy and the Ideal of Conversation (Edinburgh UP, 2023) clarifies this lofty yet vague ideal, while developing a revitalizing model for interdisciplinary literary studies. It argues that conversation is key to exemplary responses to sceptical doubt in ordinary language and political philosophy – where scepticism threatens ethics and democratic politics – and in works of British fiction spanning from Jane Austen through Ali Smith. It shows that for these writers, conversation can shift attention from metaphysical doubts regarding our capacity to know ‘reality’ and other people, to ethical, democratic, and aesthetic action. The book moreover proposes – and models – ‘conversational criticism’ as a framework linking literary studies to broader political and ethical commitments, while remaining responsive to aesthetic form.
    Erin Elizabeth Greer is an Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. She teaches and writes about modern and contemporary British and Anglophone literature, ordinary language philosophy, political philosophy, feminist theory, and critical new media studies. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Contemporary Literature, JML, Camera Obscura, Salmagundi, and Stanley Cavell and Aesthetic Experience.
    Tong He is Lecturer of English at Central China Normal University.
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    • 1 hr 31 min
    What Does It Mean to Govern a Multilingual Society Well?

    What Does It Mean to Govern a Multilingual Society Well?

    Hanna Torsh speaks with Alexandra Grey about good governance in linguistically diverse cities.
    Linguistic diversity is often seen through a deficit lens. Another way of saying this is that it's perceived as a problem, particularly by institutions and governments. However, it doesn’t have to be that way and shouldn’t be that way in a participatory democracy.
    This conversation addresses 3 questions:

    Why does governance in a multilingual urban environment such as Sydney matter?

    How do you investigate good governance in multilingual urban environments?

    How did public health communication during the Covid-19 pandemic fail some linguistic communities and how can it be improved?


    “Chats in Linguistic Diversity” is a podcast about linguistic diversity in social life brought to you by the Language on the Move team. We explore multilingualism, language learning, and intercultural communication in the contexts of globalization and migration.
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    • 30 min
    What Can Australian Message Sticks Teach Us About Literacy?

    What Can Australian Message Sticks Teach Us About Literacy?

    Ingrid Piller speaks with Piers Kelly about a fascinating form of visual communication, Australian message sticks.
    What does a message stick look like? What is its purpose, and how has the use of message sticks changed over time from the precolonial period via the late 19th/early 20th century and into the present? Why do we know so little about message sticks, and how has colonialism shaped our knowledge about message sticks? How did message sticks fit into the multilingual communication ecology of precolonial Australia? And, of course, the million-dollar question: are message sticks a form of writing?
    First published on August 18, 2020.
    “Chats in Linguistic Diversity” is a podcast about linguistic diversity in social life brought to you by the Language on the Move team. We explore multilingualism, language learning, and intercultural communication in the contexts of globalization and migration.
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    • 48 min

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