Linguaphile
A Life of Language Love
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize
A celebration of the beauty and mystery of language and how it shapes our lives, our loves, and our world.
If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is language: written, spoken, signed, understood, and misunderstood, in all its infinite glory. In this ingenious, lyrical exploration, Julie Sedivy draws on years of experience in the lab and a lifetime of linguistic love to bring the discoveries of linguistics home, to the place language itself lives: within the yearnings of the human heart and amid the complex social bonds that it makes possible.
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love follows the path that language takes through a human life—from an infant’s first attempts at sense-making to the vulnerabilities and losses that accompany aging. As Sedivy shows, however, language and life are inextricable, and here she offers them together: a childish misunderstanding of her mother’s meaning reveals the difficulty of relating to other minds; frustration with “professional” communication styles exposes the labyrinth of standards that define success; the first signs of hearing loss lead to a meditation on society’s discomfort with physical and mental limitations.
Part memoir, part scientific exploration, and part cultural commentary, this book epitomizes the thrills of a life steeped in the aesthetic delights of language and the joys of its scientific scrutiny.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Language scientist Sedivy (Memory Speaks) delivers a rapturous essay collection in which scientific research comingles with recollections of the author's childhood as a Czechoslovakian refugee. "By the age of five, due to my family's winding trajectory through Europe and eventually Canada, five languages had seeped into my brain," Sedivy writes—Czech, German, Italian, French, and English. In 12 essays across three sections ("Childhood," "Maturity," and "Loss"), she catalogs the influence of language on different phases of her life, expertly knitting together factual details with lyrical anecdotes. At one point, Sedivy posits that humans are, in some ways, more like songbirds than primates, describing the former as "our kindred patternmakers and imitators of sound." Elsewhere, she examines the significance and cultural endurance of the moment when Helen Keller spelled out the word for water. Sedivy also turns her keen sense of observation on herself, capturing her excitement during her first linguistics class ("I had not imagined it possible to look under the surface of language," she writes, detailing how she thrilled to the "concealed order" under the "membrane of conscious awareness"), and providing a fascinating window onto historical fears about the "dangers of bilingualism, which, some claimed, could lead... to schizophrenia or intellectual disability." For lovers of the written and spoken word, this enchanting study is a must.
