Review The Politics of Language by David Beaver and Jason Stanley

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Ed Battistella
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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 emotions, images, and actions in listeners all of which can be manipulated by what they call “hustle” (communicative actions that are not transparent). The book offers a detailed critique of the so-called “content delivery model” of communication in favor a view of communication in terms of speech practices of communities. In a culture or subcultures, certain language practices presuppose the ideology and may further effect a harmony with social identity. They argue that linguistic neutrality is illusory and dispute the idea that there is such a thing as language that avoids ideology shading. If you are wedded to the idea that literal meaning, neutral language, and straight talk are the way to save civil society, this book will challenge those beliefs.

The work is a collaboration between David Beaver, a University of Texas scholar who has authored and coauthored books on semantic focus, logic and visual information, and dynamic semantics, and Jason Stanley, the University of Toronto scholar and author of How Fascism Works, How Propaganda Works and other books. This was a productive collaboration, resulting in a wide ranging 500-page book that draws on many fields beyond philosophy and linguistics. It is also a challenging book, best read in small bites, and Beaver and Stanley have done us the favor of organizing its eleven chapters into short sections of about five or so pages.

The key argument will be familiar to linguists, and Beaver and Stanley construct it in a unique fashion. Parts I and II of the book set out a novel theory of meaning. The first three chapters cover the concepts of resonance, attunement, and harmony. Beaver and Stanley discuss language in terms of the resonances (predictable actions) of words such as “freedom,” “vermin,” “inner city,” etc. but also note the resonances of phrases and images). Attunement refers to an individual’s predictable response to social practices, and harmony refer to the ways in which to the ways in which systems of attunement change (consonance or dissonance). They demonstrate how these features can come together into broader narratives which prime emotions such as hate and can generate contagions of hate.

Chapters 4 and 5 weave in the linguistics of presupposition, giving that concept a description in terms of resonances which can transmit and maintain ideology. As they explain it: “The power of political communication rests on its ability to draw attention, drive attunement, and differentiate adversaries.” They go into the concept fully, in all it linguistics glory, and extend it to show how accommodation makes presuppositions informative.

Chapter 6 “On Parole” gets to the concept of meaningfulness, defined this way

Something is inwardly (/outwardly) meaningful for some individual or group to the extent that it resonates for them (/for others) in a way that activates attunements that are distinctive to their identity. (p 269)

So for example, denigrating slurs or sexist comments will resonate with some listeners, spreading or reinforcing the discriminatory ideology such comments presuppose and layering them with other similar ideological presuppositions. They draw on the Communication Accommodation theory of Howard Giles and the idea of echo amplification to show how groups harmonize to the linguistic and symbolic practices of the ideologies of those whose opinions they value.

Part III of the book (IDEALIZATION) takes up notions of neutrality and straight talk as idealizations of democratic societies. In Chapter Seven they review the relevant literature, arguing that, at best, neutrality is a limited notion (and at worst an instrument of oppression). Chapter Eight similarly dissects the notion of straight talk as transparent language pointing out that many language practices (such as insinuation) involve hustle rather than transparency Together the two chapter challenge to notion of discourse that is free of perspectives, and thus free of ideology. Chapter Nine concludes with a critique of the idealization of ordinary language philosophy, arguing that the centrality of neutrality to academic philosophy and semantics has led to those disciplines ignoring the pervasive role of non-neutrality.

Part IV is titled OPPRESION AND FREEDOM, and here the authors show in some detail how different types of oppressive language work, beginning with slurs and genocidal language and moving on to bureaucratic language (with key examples from the Third Reich and from Michigan’s Emergency Management Law). The key idea continues to be the way in which the presumed neutrality masks the harm that is carried by such language. They end with an analysis of the arguments for free speech and some of the idealization that are involved in debates about its the scope and value. They suggest an equality-based foundation for free speech rather than a liberty-based one as a means of preserving a democratic discourse space in which necessary contests of meaning are possible.

While the book has serious philosophical chops (Wittgenstein, Austin, Grice, Stalnaker, Kartunnen, Kaplan, Heim, Saul, Camp, MacKinnon, Rawls, Tirrell and more), Beaver and Stanley have also woven in much research from psychology and sociology (Leon Festinger, Elizabeth Loftus, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Dan Gilbert, Paul Ekman, Gregory Bateson, Stanley Fish, Victor Klemperer, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Judith Butler all have cameos) and from history and literature. Examples are taken from news and current events and ring true. Princeton University Press has done a fine job of producing The Politics of Language (footnotes rather than endnotes) and has included a helpful glossary of the technical terms. The Politics of Language is a book with several academic audiences in mind, and those less versed in the philosophical literature will need to reread certain parts to get the full effect. That’s a good thing, as this is a book that should be read and reread.

 

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What I’m reading March and April 2026

Posted on May 9, 2026 by Ed Battistella
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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 ruminations during a faculty meeting, during which he hides a purloined knapsack while listening to colleagues he disdains, and his thoughts at the gym, while lifting and sweating (with some homoerotic overtones) in the sauna. In the background is a mysterious colleague who is his lifting mentor and his obsession with Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.

Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard by Robert Desjarlais

At a recent chess tournament, I was in a game where not much was going on and started to watch the other players—the fidgeters, the poker-faced, the ones holding their heads in their hands, the compulsive piece adjustors, and the ones whose hands hovered over several pieces before moving one. I remember thinking, someone should write an ethnography of chess tournaments. Desjarlais’s Counterplay is not quite that, but it’s the next best thing. Desjarlais draws on his own experiences (at the Manhattan and Marshall Chess Clubs and at events like the World Open) to explore the unique grip of from a variety of perspectives. Only occasionally academic, the book gives anecdotes and insightful character sketches in what goes on in the minds of experienced players during competition. A good read for players and the people than live with them.

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

A husband disappears and his wife and daughter track him down, discovering his secret life. I moved briskly, Harlan Coben-like till the end, where things got rather convoluted.

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – A woman arrived in Paris to meet her brother, who it turns out is nowhere to be found. Instead, she encounters an Addams-familyesque apartment building filled with secrets. This book struck me as the opposite of The Last Thing He Told Me, a bit slow at the start with its revolving narrative, but gripping at the end.

Reflections of English Word-Formation by Laurie Bauer

I reviewed this for CHOICE, so I won’t repeat it here. But it offered 30 short commentaries on all areas of morphology and plenty of great examples.

Why We Talk Funny by Valerie Fridland

An excellent book and my long review is here.

The Politics of Language by David Beaver and Jason Stanley

I gave a progress report on this and will post a fuller review soon.

How Deeply Human Is Language? Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy by Yosef Grodzinsky

Grodzinsky makes the case that for distinguishing knowledge of language from what large language models do and he does an especially nice job of presenting the history of generative grammar and the history of AI models. More on this book to come.

 

 

Next up: Revenge Prey by John Sanford. Time for some summer reading.

 

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Review of Valerie Fridland, Why We Talk Funny

Posted on April 23, 2026 by Ed Battistella
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Review of Valerie Fridland, Why We Talk Funny

Contrary to popular belief, we’ve all got an accent. In Why We Talk Funny, linguist Valerie Fridland digs deep into the notion of accent, offering an engaging tale of how they arise, how they work, and how they affect our lives. With relatable examples and current research results, she brings together linguistics, psychology, and history of English in a fresh, and sometimes sassy way.

Fridland is a University of Nevada-Reno sociolinguist who also pens a column for Psychology Today, so she is used to writing for real people. In the book’s seven chapters, she takes us from a baby’s first sounds to the prehistory of language and the history of English in Britain and the United States. treats Chapter One (“Baby Steps”) shows us how babies deal with sounds and the importance of the social and interpersonal cues they get about sounds. Chapter Two (Our Origin Story”) goes way back to eighteenth and nineteenth century theories about the origins of language and to the later work of people like Sir William Jones and Jacob Grimm (of fairy tale fame). Chapter Three (“Linguistic (R)-Evolutionary”) is about the formation of an American language and the way in which the r-sound divides British and American speech (among other things, you’ll learn why Brits say arse and Americans say ass). Chapter Four (“Divided Tongues and a Divided Nation”) is about how American accents developed, spread, and continue to change, including the surprisingly late development of Southern drawl and some weird West Coast vowels. Chapter Five (“Classing It Up”) introduces the ways in which social values are attached to accents and how pronunciations might be seen as sloppy, bougie, or more or less employable. In Chapter Six (“ What Color is Your Accent”), we learn about African American language, African American speech, and how we sound black and hear black as well. Finally Chapter Seven (“ Strangers at the Linguistic Gates”) looks at the sounds of other languages—their rhythms, stresses, sound inventories, and how it is that our perspective affects how we evaluate foreign accents.

Fridland also offers periodic SOUND BITES , as she dubs them, These are mini-lessons on topics that will capture the imagination of any reader: why many people find the word moist so execrable, what may have happened in the lost colony of Roanoke and how it relates to the Lumbee Indian language, and why we find certain accents pleasing or grating. As she did in her book Like Literally Dude, Fridland introduces the relevant scholarship without letting it get in the way and she has a knack for capturing the reader’s attention with anecdotes and humor.

Why We Talk Funny also has a consistent serious message: language differences are always with us and always evolving and our accents bring people together in an appreciation of who we are and what we share. Even when we talk different. Why We Talk Funny is a book about language for every language lover.

 

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

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Ed Battistella
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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 Real Story Behind Our Accents. Her work explores how social changes, linguistic forces, and psychological tendencies reshape our language over time, impacting the way we think about and talk to one another.

​​​Among other things, Fridland is a two-time National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and the recipient of the Linguistic Society of America’s Linguistics, Language, and the Public award, She writes a monthly blog on language-related topics for Psychology Today, is a regular guest writer for the popular Grammar Girl podcast, and has a lecture series, Language and Society, available with The Great Courses. She has appeared as a language expert in a variety of media outlets such as NPR, Armchair Expert, NBC, The Washington Post, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

EB: I really enjoyed Why We Talk Funny. Can you tell us why you wrote it?

VF: So happy to hear that! I wrote Why We Talk Funny because my parents were French speaking immigrants and, when I was a kid, I was hyper aware of the fact that there were not many other people who sounded like them in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Everywhere we went, my parent’s accents were noticed and, as a result, we were treated a bit differently. As a child, feeling different is the last thing you want, but it really highlighted for me how important accents are to our identities and how others perceive us. This realization led, years later, to my interest in sociolinguistics, or the way that language and social life interact. Also, given the South’s own famed accent, there was a lot of awareness about accents more generally (or at least discussion about why Yankees sound funny), so I guess I had a lot of accent-oriented angst in my early life.

EB: Who is your book for? Who is the target audience? Who should I give a copy to?

VF: If you know anybody with an accent, this is the book for them – which means everyone since of course we all have accents.

I wrote this book specifically for non-linguists because there is so much rich history and science behind the reasons we sound the way we do and it is rarely unpacked for those who don’t work in speech science, cognitive psychology or linguistics. But it is so important to understand not only why we speak with accents but also how we hear with accents as well, because there is very little we do in life where the way we say things or hear things doesn’t matter.

EB: Part of the book gives the origin story of English in Britain and of language more broadly. But you also tell readers about your origin story as a linguist. How does one become a linguist?

VF: I think my early formative years as a child immersed in accents both foreign and Southern unconsciously primed me for a linguistic future, but I pretty much fell into linguistics as a field because I was a Chinese language major in college and had to take linguistics courses as part of that program. One of the early courses I took focused on the language of social life where we covered things like whether men and women differ in the way they talk and how age and ethnicity affect the linguistic choices we make and I was completely hooked. But to be a sociolinguist, you typically need an advanced degree, so I went on to get a PhD in linguistics. My first job after graduation was in Istanbul, Turkey as a visiting professor, where I was amazed at how people could tell that I was American from just hearing me say “Merhaba,” i.e., “Hello.” Accents at work again!

EB: One of your sections dealt with intrusive-r in warsh, which I have in my speech, off and on. What’s the story there with r?

VF: I love that you say “warsh” sometimes, as it is a receding feature, meaning that people don’t say it as much anymore as they used to. This pronunciation is a bit mysterious, since the ‘r’ is inserted into words where it doesn’t historically belong. It seems to be related to early colonial days when the “ah” vowel was pronounced with a bit more lip rounding than it is today, especially in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. Particularly before the “sh” sound, which involves the front of the tongue lifted toward the little ridge behind your teeth that you burn when you eat pizza, a rounder lip can cause the tail end of the vowel to sound a bit like an “r” sound. Thus, you get words like “wash” or “squash” that sounded more like “warsh” or “squarsh.” Since spelling was not tops on anybody’s list at a time when people were both likely to be illiterate and more concerned with surviving illness, conflicts, and starvation, the pronunciation stuck around – at least until greater familiarity with spelling became more influential on how people spoke.

In a slightly different version of an intrusive “r,” sometimes “r” gets inserted where it doesn’t historically belong in words like idea (e.g., “idear”) or law (“lawr”) because of the influence of a different process called “linking ‘r’.” This version applies mainly to cases where speakers don’t typically pronounce all their “r” sounds, as in some dialects of British English, and is a bit more complicated in terms of when and why it happens. The story of how we say (or don’t say) our “r” sound is one of the most fascinating tales in the book and it really illuminates how social triggers like migration, revolution, and changing ideology deeply impact the sounds we say.

EB: I have never thought about the aesthetics of accents and so I especially enjoyed the section on that topic. What makes a language or an accent beautiful or ugly?

VF: I think we all have a language that we have a bit of a crush on – one that appeals to us even without understanding a word and one which makes speakers seem just a tad bit sexier. Rarely, though, do we spend much time wondering what makes for a love language, linguistically speaking. Luckily, researchers in an area called “phonoaesthetics,” or the study of the intrinsic beauty of sounds, have spent some time on this question. They have found a number of factors explain linguistic attraction. For one, languages with more open syllables, like “ta” or “la,” tend to be preferred, as well as those where sonorant sounds are more frequent, a category which includes all vowels and the sounds “l,” “r”, “m,” and “n.” One reason these features might be appealing is because they make a language sound more melodious and musical – in other words, they are more singable. The Romance languages, ones like French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, use more open syllables and sonorant sounds compared to Germanic languages like English, German, or Dutch, which might explain why Holy Roman Emperor Charles V claimed that he “spoke Spanish to God, Italian to women and German to his horse.”

EB: What’s your favorite odd fact about accents that you didn’t put in the book?

VF: One fact that didn’t make the book but I find fascinating is that there are some anthropologists and linguists, particularly those who are trying to trace the evolution of language in pre-history, who found that languages became less phonemically complex – or lost sounds – as they dispersed from the original source language in Africa some 50,000 or so years ago. For instance, some African languages, particularly click languages, have sound systems that number over 100, while most European languages, including English, have far fewer, around 30 to 40. This mirrors what has been found with genetic diversity, which also seems to have decreased with distance from Africa. However, this is still controversial as it is hard to really pinpoint anything about languages that no longer exist and for which we have no records.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

VF: Sure. Thank you for the chance to chat a bit about Why We Talk Funny!

 

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