The Materiality of Language: Gender, Politics, and the University [Paperback]

David Bleich sees the human body, its affective life, social life, and political functions as belonging to the study of language. InThe 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.

Opening the doors to language, literacy, and social participation

David Bleich is Professor of English at the University of Rochester and author ofKnow and Tell: A Pedagogy of Disclosure, Genre, and MembershipandThe Double Perspective: Language, Literacy, and Social Relations,among other books.

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

The Materiality of Languagesees the human body, its affective life, social life, and political functions as belonging to the study of language. To recognize language as material and to treat it lS*