Category Archives: Ideas and Opinions

Review of How Deeply Human is Language: Chomsky, The Brain, and the AI Fantasy  by Yosef Grodzinsky

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Ed Battistella

Review of How Deeply Human is Language: Chomsky, The Brain, and the AI Fantasy  by Yosef Grodzinsky In this short and lucid work, Grodzinsky (Director of the Neurolinguistics Lab at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for the Brain Sciences) … Continue reading →

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Review The Politics of Language by David Beaver and Jason Stanley

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Ed Battistella

The Politics of Language by David Beaver and Jason Stanley Published in 2025, The Politics of Language, by David Beaver and Jason Stanley convincingly makes the case that most speech has ideological meaning and that the connotations of words evoke … Continue reading →

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What I’m reading March and April 2026

Posted on May 9, 2026 by Ed Battistella

Muscle Man by Jordan Castro A colleague who I run into the gym recommended this. It’s the quirky story of Harold, an unhappy literature professor who finds solace from a mundane career in weight lifting. The key scenes are his … Continue reading →

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An Interview with Valerie Fridland, author of Why We Talk Funny

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Ed Battistella

Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno and the author of Like Literally Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English and the 2026 release Why We Talk Funny: The … Continue reading →

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