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. 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.

A powerful, first-rate book on a crucial topic. It offers a great interpretation of the sacralization and ascendancy of Latin as a language supporting what Bleich calls 'an elite group of men.'. . . This is a brilliant codebook to academic language and its coercions.A critique of male-dominated modes of language use, their roots in the founding and administering of the university, their effects on what can and can't be studied, and their spill over into popular culture. . . . This critique roams broadly over science, social science, [and the] humanities, and both the critique and the alternative are powerfully rendered.[The author's] thesis is interesting and provocative. He argues forcefully for the relevance of language, construed as a material entity, across a wide range of disciplines (and to life in general), and challenges the focus on treating language as a cognitive phenomenon and studying it in abstract terms.11/7/13

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 StudylÃ*