The Materiality of Language, livre ebook

Winner, 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication Outstanding Book Award

Listen to an interview with the author on New Books in Language

David Bleich sees the human body, its affective life, social life, and political functions as belonging to the study of language. In The Materiality of Language, Bleich addresses the need to end centuries of limiting access to language and its many contexts of use. To recognize language as material and treat it as such, argues Bleich, is to remove restrictions to language access due to historic patterns of academic censorship and unfair gender practices. Language is understood as a key path in the formation of all social and political relations, and becomes available for study by all speakers, who may regulate it, change it, and make it flexible like other material things.

Introduction: The Contested Subject
Part One: The Materiality of Language
Chapter 1: Premises and Backgrounds
Chapter 2: Received Standards in the Study of Language
Chapter 3: Materiality and Genre
Chapter 4: The Unity of Language and Thought
Chapter 5: Materiality and the Contemporary Study of Language
Chapter 6: Recognizing Politics in the Study of Language
Part Two: Language in the University
Chapter 7: Frustrations of Academic Language
Chapter 8: The Protected Institution
Chapter 9: The Sacred Language
Chapter 10: Language Uses in Science, the Heir of Latin
Chapter 11: Language and Human Survival
Chapter 12: The Materiality of Literature and the Contested Subject
Works Cited and Consulted
Index