Reading recommendations?

[harrar]

As a teacher who just started summer break, I'm trying to form a reading list for the next few months. While I love light fiction reads, I'm also looking for something heavy that can teach me a lot. I'll be applying to applied linguistics and TESOL programs soon, so I'm hoping to find something that makes me think differently about these topics than I have before. I'm also interested in anything with a flair of interculturalism to it, fiction or nonfiction, especially involving refugee stories (I'm a volunteer ESL teacher currently and I'm always trying to learn more about my students' backgrounds).

What are the essential books that a linguist should read? 

 

[historicallinguist]

On June 10, 2016 at 9:50 AM, harrar said:

As a teacher who just started summer break, I'm trying to form a reading list for the next few months. While I love light fiction reads, I'm also looking for something heavy that can teach me a lot. I'll be applying to applied linguistics and TESOL programs soon, so I'm hoping to find something that makes me think differently about these topics than I have before. I'm also interested in anything with a flair of interculturalism to it, fiction or nonfiction, especially involving refugee stories (I'm a volunteer ESL teacher currently and I'm always trying to learn more about my students' backgrounds).

What are the essential books that a linguist should read? 

 

Here is one for semantics: Semantics in Generative Grammar by Heim and Kratzer (1998). 

[knp]

China Miéville, Embassytown

I did not like the ending—so feel free to come back and yell about it with me—but it is a stunningly original piece of science fiction that takes language as its central conceit. I would look for something to compare it to, but I don't know of anything that would work. I'm not sure what the actual linguists think of it, but I know a linguistic anthropologist who likes it.

Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

A very well-written novel about two children of a refugee from the Dominican Republic (and about their refugee mother, too). It has language issues in it, and also gives a gripping history of the DR in the twentieth century.

[ClassicalEducator]

Read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Phenomenal novel and one of the best ones I've read in years. Another great book is Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremba. I am essentially an Af Am Studies person, so my reading lately has skewed towards that. If those are insufficient, let me know and I can think of others. 

Both novels feature female African protagonists and demonstrate a wonderfully broad vocabulary. 

Edited June 19, 2016 by ClassicalEducator

[MastersHoping]

Try "A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea." Talks about a girl's life in North Korea and China and details her escape from North Korea. If you haven't thought much about East Asia or North Korea and things like that, could be a good introduction. If you have, it could be a nice one to add to the collection. 

[historicallinguist]

On June 19, 2016 at 6:42 AM, MastersHoping said:

Try "A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea." Talks about a girl's life in North Korea and China and details her escape from North Korea. If you haven't thought much about East Asia or North Korea and things like that, could be a good introduction. If you have, it could be a nice one to add to the collection. 

I am not sure whether this is an essential reading for linguists. The OP was asking for books a linguist must read, and I am afraid that a literary work such as the one you mentioned is more suitable for a literature class than for a linguistics class.

[knp]

On 6/10/2016 at 9:50 AM, harrar said:

I'm also interested in anything with a flair of interculturalism to it, fiction or nonfiction, especially involving refugee stories (I'm a volunteer ESL teacher currently and I'm always trying to learn more about my students' backgrounds).

12 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

I am not sure whether this is an essential reading for linguists. The OP was asking for books a linguist must read, and I am afraid that a literary work such as the one you mentioned is more suitable for a literature class than for a linguistics class.

You're absolutely right, the OP asked for some linguistics reading recommendations! You'll notice, though, that they also asked for books about refugees.

[MastersHoping]

On 6/22/2016 at 6:49 AM, knp said:

You're absolutely right, the OP asked for some linguistics reading recommendations! You'll notice, though, that they also asked for books about refugees.

Thank you, knp. I don't think historicallinguist read the entire first post. I am not a linguist and do not know anything about linguistics, so the only reason I responded was because he/she was asking for books about refugees. Everyone knows about refugees from Syria and Latin America, but North Korea not as much. 

[historicallinguist]

12 hours ago, MastersHoping said:

Thank you, knp. I don't think historicallinguist read the entire first post. I am not a linguist and do not know anything about linguistics, so the only reason I responded was because he/she was asking for books about refugees. Everyone knows about refugees from Syria and Latin America, but North Korea not as much. 

I studied some Korean (pedagogical grammar and language use) before, and I know quite a bit about the North Korean refugees. Based on what I know about the memoir you mentioned by Eunsun Kim, I think that many of the claims and their supportive facts laid out in this book are highly questionable, and it is a book that is highly politically motivated.(to some extent, unilaterally biased). 

While it is undeniable that there are some factual elements laid out in this book, some parts of this book are certainly fictitious, and are stories that the author was politically motivated to tell, and still, for some other parts of this book, it is very difficult to tell whether what the author said is the factual description of what she experienced, or is merely her imagination, because there is no way for us to verify the truth-value of what she said for these parts either way. 

So, I would recommend that, when reading this book, one has to read it very critically and carefully, and refrain from automatically taking the claims and descriptions in this book as factual without further verifying whatever the author said. 

[MastersHoping]

7 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

I studied some Korean (pedagogical grammar and language use) before, and I know quite a bit about the North Korean refugees. Based on what I know about the memoir you mentioned by Eunsun Kim, I think that many of the claims and their supportive facts laid out in this book are highly questionable, and it is a book that is highly politically motivated.(to some extent, unilaterally biased). 

While it is undeniable that there are some factual elements laid out in this book, some parts of this book are certainly fictitious, and are stories that the author was politically motivated to tell, and still, for some other parts of this book, it is very difficult to tell whether what the author said is the factual description of what she experienced, or is merely her imagination, because there is no way for us to verify the truth-value of what she said for these parts either way. 

So, I would recommend that, when reading this book, one has to read it very critically and carefully, and refrain from automatically taking the claims and descriptions in this book as factual without further verifying whatever the author said. 

Oh really, Joseph McCarthy? Did you read it? What "claims" are you referring to? If you didn't read the book, and can't specify specifically which "stories" you are referring to, you cannot make these claims. If you did read it, what grounds do you have to suggest that this book was "politically" motivated?

And also, how do you propose that we, as private citizens, are to go around verifying the claims and descriptions in the book? Go to her hometown in North Korea and see if the descriptions match up? As an American citizen, I'm gonna have to say no thanks to getting arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned. Other than that, I'm not too sure how else you plan to "verify" the book's contents. 

I'm not sure why you chose to choose my recommendation in particular to discredit, but I'm also not trying to argue about the merits of a particular book with you. The OP simply asked for some simple recommendations for books about linguistics or refugee stories, and I did just that.

Since your original gripe was this book is too "literary," I take it you didn't read the other recommendations in this thread either. Although this work is nonfiction, you said that it was more appropriate for a literature class. Some of the other suggestions were novels but yet you're not scrutinizing them? 

Edited June 26, 2016 by MastersHoping

[historicallinguist]

41 minutes ago, MastersHoping said:

Oh really, Joseph McCarthy? Did you read it? What "claims" are you referring to? If you didn't read the book, and can't specify specifically which "stories" you are referring to, you cannot make these claims. If you did read it, what grounds do you have to suggest that this book was "politically" motivated?

And also, how do you propose that we, as private citizens, are to go around verifying the claims and descriptions in the book? Go to her hometown in North Korea and see if the descriptions match up? As an American citizen, I'm gonna have to say no thanks to getting arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned. Other than that, I'm not too sure how else you plan to "verify" the book's contents. 

I'm not sure why you chose to choose my recommendation in particular to discredit, but I'm also not trying to argue about the merits of a particular book with you. The OP simply asked for some simple recommendations for books about linguistics or refugee stories, and I did just that.

Since your original gripe was this book is too "literary," I take it you didn't read the other recommendations in this thread either. Although this work is nonfiction, you said that it was more appropriate for a literature class. Some of the other suggestions were novels but yet you're not scrutinizing them? 

 

First of all, I could talk about only things I studied. I talked about your book in the previous threads because I have some knowledge of the book, and of Korea in general. I did not study Syrian and/or other Semitic languages, and therefore it would not be appropriate and qualified for me to talk about these things that I never studied. 

One major ground I have to suggest that this book was politically motivated is the conflict of interest between the author and the North Korean regime. The author is clearly in conflict against the regime, and the regime is against her. There is no doubt about this. So, think about it. If you are describing some entity E, which you hate it very much, would you think that you would be able to judge E without prejudice? I do not think so. Because of conflict of interests, I think the author should have recused herself from making judgments about the regime, and the regime should also recuse itself from making judgments about the author, because either judgment (from either direction) would not be expected to come out as fair without prejudice. But the reality is that the author did come out with a book that presents not much herself as a person (or refugee) as an arraignment (or to some extent, a rant) on how terrible the regime is. Then, does this book worth reading? Yes, but read with caution and be aware of the personal prejudice of the author against what she is trying to present. 

If you review some of the book-reviews of this book, you would also find that some reviewers judge this book as "simplistically written", but thinks that this is book is valuable because it is a documentation of the human rights violation of the DPRK regime. I beg to differ. Whereas this book is some kind of documentation, I would question whether it is an accurate and unbiased documentation. Besides all these problems related to conflicts of interests and likely biases associated with such conflicts, I would also point out that a huge chunk of this book appeals to pathos. If you will, put aside whatever emotions you may have when you read the book, re-read it like a justice sitting in a court hearing a case, ask analytical questions in the sense of analytical philosophy about some of the issues she presented. I can assure you that, if you do these, you will find inconsistencies of various kinds in this book, and therefore conclude that this book is not as non-fictitious as it claims to be, and also concur with me that this book is inadmissible as evidence against the regime (Of course, this is not to deny that some other independent evidences outside this book may serve as evidences against the regime for its human right records). Thus, I would say that this book is a mixture of reality and (wishful) imagination. 

As you said, it is very hard, if possible at all, for us to verify many of the things she had to say about the regime. I agree with you. In this sense, it is fair to say that the truth-value of many of her propositions are unknowable, because we have no way to map her expressions to the external reality of the world we are living in. If that is the case, these of her statements are cognitively meaningless because they can neither be verified analytically nor be verified empirically. Then, what is the difference between these statements by the author, and the famous sentence coined by Chomsky "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", which is syntactically correct but semantically meaningless?

 

 

[MastersHoping]

4 hours ago, historicallinguist said:

 

First of all, I could talk about only things I studied....BS BS BS BS

I really, really don't want to be arguing with you over a pointless contention you had with a book suggestion I had. And I'm also not sure how you expected me be familiar with your knowledge or lack thereof of North Korea or Syria or Semitic languages. You also still haven't made it clear whether you have actually read this book, just that you had read some of the reviews. Although many of your statements, particularly the last one, rival the logical reasoning ability of a moldy potato, I'm not going to take the time to respond to each point you made. I am just going to point out that this is essentially what you said:

"This girl had gripes with North Korea. Therefore, we cannot accept this as evidence against the North Korean regime."

Imagine what an asshole you would've looked like if you had said this about the Diary of Anne Frank,

"This girl had gripes with Hitler. Therefore, we cannot accept this as evidence against the Nazi regime."

This is my last response to you. Thank you, and have a nice day. 

Edited June 26, 2016 by MastersHoping