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Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
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 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 within the yearnings of the human heart and amid the complex social bonds that it makes possible.
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 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.
If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is 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 within the yearnings of the human heart and amid the complex social bonds that it makes possible.
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 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.
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2024
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April 11, 2024
There are limitless platitudes about the virtues of language—language bridges minds, language defines the human experience, language is power. But what Julie Sedivy's book offers is so much more interesting: a celebration of the failures of language, the ambiguity of words, the impenetrability of a foreign language, the linguistic richness of old age even as the brain slows down. In her own research into psycholinguistics, the study of how the mind perceives sounds and words, Julie Sedivy was more drawn to the disfluencies of human speech, the slips of the tongue, the misinterpretations of garden-path sentences, the cases of aphasia. Whereas other linguists in her grad-school days tended be more interested in the abstract system of language, understanding and describing language according to a precise but theoretical grammar, Sedivy was more interested in the messy process of how brains understand language (in one of her own experiments, she discovered that when tests-subjects in a room full of objects are told to look for "candy", their eyes briefly skirt towards the "candle" when they hear "cand" but then turn to the candy when they here the final "y"). Her memoir starts with her experience as a young girl, a native Czech speaker, trying to communicate with her friend who only spoke Italian. Even as a child, she was attracted to the mystery and incomprehensibility of language, the puzzling sounds and elusive meanings of foreign words. As Julie Sedivy discusses moments of her life (marriage, divorce, the death of her husband), she reflects on what she has learned about the limits of language, the unknowability, the complexity, the "fumbling" of communication.
There is so much to learn from this book, She talks about the different status she ascribed to languages (Czech was the language of her parents; Italian was the language of freedom; English was "the language of authority and aspiration"; French, the language she spoke in East Montreal with kids on the street, was the language of fun, the shared patois of immigrant children). Drawing on both her personal experiences and research, she describes how languages and accents were, in the school room, more of a dividing line than race—children naturally make friends with the people who sound like them and speak their language. Children will also trust familiar people when learning new words while they will distrust strangers and people who don't use words in similar ways. Elsewhere, as she reflects on her later life, she discusses the Japanese idea of "kuuki o yomu" (reading the room), the idea that good conversationalists often speak elliptically and mysteriously, because they value and love each other enough to spend the time decoding each other's speech. Obliqueness and ambiguity are not linguistic errors or infelicities, but a show of respect and trust (whereas, for many Americans, directness and explicitness are more often praised). Later, on a related topic, she talks about how women are often penalized for moments when they hedge or suggest uncertainty (when more often they are actually trying to build rapport). She cites a fascinating study which showed that when male contestants are losing the game, they are more likely to use uptalk (raising their tone at the end of a sentence so that it sounds like a question, suggesting uncertainty); in contrast, women are more often inclined to use uptalk when they are ahead in the game and they don't want to be perceived as gloating.
I found something liberating in this book, upending conventional ideas about language. Sedivy turns a skeptical eye on public speaking clubs which discourage the use of fillers (like "um" and "ah"); Sedivy argues we should embrace these disfluencies as a sign of authentic thinking. A person who pauses and interrupts their speech is genuinely pondering. I loved her chapter on old age. Younger audiences are often prejudiced to view the slow-speaking elderly as doddering victims of cognitive decline, but what Sedivy argues is that, while cognition slows down in old age, the elderly often have a wealth of more knowledge (and when speaking, they are often juggling significantly more information accumulated over decades). Their slow speech needs to be reappraised as evidence of deep wisdom rather than feeble dementia. I was particularly interested in her discussion of the writer Paul West, a prolific novelist and poet who suffered a profound stroke resulting in global aphasia. While his neurologist predicted he would only make limited improvement, West was able to recover significant linguistic skill because his literary mind had created a rich network of pathways (when a therapist asked him to identify a figure on a piece of paper, West said "cherubim" only to be corrected, "no, it's an angel". Trying to recall the word for 'money", his mind pulls out the archaic slang "spondulick"). We need to rethink what we consider language proficiency, what we have predetermined sounds smart. There is a treasure of linguistic creativity even in someone who has sustained significant brain damage.
Whether discussing aphasia, old age, or deafness, Sedivy offers a refreshing perspective—language is resilient. The deaf have invented sophisticated means to communicate; victims of aphasia have heroically overcome debilitating obstacles. Sedivy's book invites readers to see language as so much more diverse and so much more expressive than we give credit for. There is beauty in dithering speech, halting conversations and all the linguistic fumbling of human life.
There is so much to learn from this book, She talks about the different status she ascribed to languages (Czech was the language of her parents; Italian was the language of freedom; English was "the language of authority and aspiration"; French, the language she spoke in East Montreal with kids on the street, was the language of fun, the shared patois of immigrant children). Drawing on both her personal experiences and research, she describes how languages and accents were, in the school room, more of a dividing line than race—children naturally make friends with the people who sound like them and speak their language. Children will also trust familiar people when learning new words while they will distrust strangers and people who don't use words in similar ways. Elsewhere, as she reflects on her later life, she discusses the Japanese idea of "kuuki o yomu" (reading the room), the idea that good conversationalists often speak elliptically and mysteriously, because they value and love each other enough to spend the time decoding each other's speech. Obliqueness and ambiguity are not linguistic errors or infelicities, but a show of respect and trust (whereas, for many Americans, directness and explicitness are more often praised). Later, on a related topic, she talks about how women are often penalized for moments when they hedge or suggest uncertainty (when more often they are actually trying to build rapport). She cites a fascinating study which showed that when male contestants are losing the game, they are more likely to use uptalk (raising their tone at the end of a sentence so that it sounds like a question, suggesting uncertainty); in contrast, women are more often inclined to use uptalk when they are ahead in the game and they don't want to be perceived as gloating.
I found something liberating in this book, upending conventional ideas about language. Sedivy turns a skeptical eye on public speaking clubs which discourage the use of fillers (like "um" and "ah"); Sedivy argues we should embrace these disfluencies as a sign of authentic thinking. A person who pauses and interrupts their speech is genuinely pondering. I loved her chapter on old age. Younger audiences are often prejudiced to view the slow-speaking elderly as doddering victims of cognitive decline, but what Sedivy argues is that, while cognition slows down in old age, the elderly often have a wealth of more knowledge (and when speaking, they are often juggling significantly more information accumulated over decades). Their slow speech needs to be reappraised as evidence of deep wisdom rather than feeble dementia. I was particularly interested in her discussion of the writer Paul West, a prolific novelist and poet who suffered a profound stroke resulting in global aphasia. While his neurologist predicted he would only make limited improvement, West was able to recover significant linguistic skill because his literary mind had created a rich network of pathways (when a therapist asked him to identify a figure on a piece of paper, West said "cherubim" only to be corrected, "no, it's an angel". Trying to recall the word for 'money", his mind pulls out the archaic slang "spondulick"). We need to rethink what we consider language proficiency, what we have predetermined sounds smart. There is a treasure of linguistic creativity even in someone who has sustained significant brain damage.
Whether discussing aphasia, old age, or deafness, Sedivy offers a refreshing perspective—language is resilient. The deaf have invented sophisticated means to communicate; victims of aphasia have heroically overcome debilitating obstacles. Sedivy's book invites readers to see language as so much more diverse and so much more expressive than we give credit for. There is beauty in dithering speech, halting conversations and all the linguistic fumbling of human life.
March 29, 2024
Linguaphile was a interesting read, part-memoir, part-treatise on language and language acquisition. The author considered language and how she absorbed it during different stages in her life from childhood through to her studies and later research. It was fascinating in many ways, but it was rather specialised and, at times, technically focused, thus it's probably more suited to language and linguistics students or those with a very deep love for language and language studies rather than every-day readers. I am giving it four stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
September 8, 2024
When I first started this book, I thought it would be about language acquisition - as in, acquisition of languages. Julie Sedivy starts with explaining how she came to know so many of them, after all. But it turned out to be about acquisition of Language (singular, capital L), as well as all other ways in which we humans inhabit Language and are haunted by it.
Part memoir, part nonfiction, these essays are definitely informed by the author's long career as a psycholinguist, but are also written so beautifully that they can be read just for the pleasure derived from literary prose. I have discovered a glitch in myself, however: after three degrees that all included some coursework and tons of academic reading on topics related to those discussed here, I realized that my mind just automatically slips into skimming mode when seeing the keywords. And it was so funny because this is something Sedivy discusses in one of the essays, the need to slow down to be able to feel the beauty of linguistic utterings. I do not know if they are planning to make an audiobook of this text, but I think that would be the best way to interact with it.
The essays are grouped into three sections, roughly following the general narrative arc from acquisition of meaning, through mature use of language, to the idea of its loss. But they can be read out of order and one by one as well.
I have received a free eARC of this book through NetGalley; the review above is my independent opinion of it.
Part memoir, part nonfiction, these essays are definitely informed by the author's long career as a psycholinguist, but are also written so beautifully that they can be read just for the pleasure derived from literary prose. I have discovered a glitch in myself, however: after three degrees that all included some coursework and tons of academic reading on topics related to those discussed here, I realized that my mind just automatically slips into skimming mode when seeing the keywords. And it was so funny because this is something Sedivy discusses in one of the essays, the need to slow down to be able to feel the beauty of linguistic utterings. I do not know if they are planning to make an audiobook of this text, but I think that would be the best way to interact with it.
The essays are grouped into three sections, roughly following the general narrative arc from acquisition of meaning, through mature use of language, to the idea of its loss. But they can be read out of order and one by one as well.
I have received a free eARC of this book through NetGalley; the review above is my independent opinion of it.
October 25, 2024
happy pub day and thank you to the publishers for an arc!
this was a beautifully written ode to languages - learning them, hearing them, and how they make their way into our lives. how and when language comes to us and then leaves our hearts. i enjoyed how this was written and sedivy's writing style - it was lyrical and beautiful and a matter of fact, like we were reading her inner thoughts while also learning something new. and i truly did learn so much from reading this, which i really appreciate! i also appreciated how this was a more nuanced take on languages and their impact - there wasn't a linear direction to this book and instead sedivy took us on a ride that reflects how expressive and dynamic languages are in itself. while definitely filled with sedivy's expertise as a linguistic, this wasn't so intimidating to read as it was also filled with the author's own personal moments and story, to which language of course played a great part. this is definitely a book that i can see myself coming back to, more so because of the wonderful writing, but also because of how it's filled with so much knowledge and merit!
this was a beautifully written ode to languages - learning them, hearing them, and how they make their way into our lives. how and when language comes to us and then leaves our hearts. i enjoyed how this was written and sedivy's writing style - it was lyrical and beautiful and a matter of fact, like we were reading her inner thoughts while also learning something new. and i truly did learn so much from reading this, which i really appreciate! i also appreciated how this was a more nuanced take on languages and their impact - there wasn't a linear direction to this book and instead sedivy took us on a ride that reflects how expressive and dynamic languages are in itself. while definitely filled with sedivy's expertise as a linguistic, this wasn't so intimidating to read as it was also filled with the author's own personal moments and story, to which language of course played a great part. this is definitely a book that i can see myself coming back to, more so because of the wonderful writing, but also because of how it's filled with so much knowledge and merit!
January 5, 2025
4.5 This one reads as if my college linguistics textbook was written by a literary fiction writer. The author traces our relationship to language from birth to death, incorporating both her insight as a psycholinguist and her personal story. It covers such topics as language acquisition (both primary and second language), aging and language, and language in relation to time. A thread on her relationship with her mother covers all the complex parts of communication that happen in real time, showing not just how miscommunication might happen but a wonder it doesn't happen more often. As a word and language lover, this was both informative, beautifully written, and a real treat.
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April 15, 2024I'm a nerd who grew up speaking two languages (both of which I'm still fluent in now as an adult), brought up in a household that speaks three (one of which I know the grammatical conventions of intuitively, but not as confident writing or speaking at length); I also like learning different languages, and though I wouldn't consider myself fluent in any of these new ones I can say that I have a deep love for languages and the different music they produce across countries and cultures. that said, i really really thought I would like reading this book.
this review was going to start on a positive note, i was sure of it, until i reached the part about the argument about a conservative and a liberal making meanings.
information is neutral. it's the telling of it that gets charged with political bias, and i regret to note that political bias is very much blatant here. i for one don't generally associate with myself with either label, finding both of them lacking in nuance (the extremes of either one is vomit-inducing for me for their inaccuracy in reflecting my personal beliefs) but Sedivy is apparently conservative-leaning, at least according to that one paragraph that attempts to describe the difference between the thinking processes of the two.
moving forward, i started scrutinizing each sentence for other things that would make me squint dubiously. the rest of this review will be written with this aforementioned knowledge in mind, just a fair warning.
it does consistently use the words "poetry" and "music" interchangeably, important to note if you're a poet and/or a musician and would like to contend with the syntactical choice.
some subsequent sections address the author's Mother which is a lovely tribute imo.
there are assertions about children that feel under-researched, or otherwise are probably drawing more from personal experience than fact, such as the assertion about children's beliefs (which, would've been presented better if a disclaimer about it were present, as in, if the author labeled such statements as reflection of personal experience rather than a generalization derived from peer-reviewed scientific research.) i think i got this impression from the distinct lack of specific experiences narrated to illustrate the assertions.
If you can enjoy a nonfiction book written with "lyrical" prose (not the adjective I would use, but I'll borrow that word from the book's description) without asking for more information, you'll probably be okay enjoying this book for what it is, but if you're like me and go "Like what? According to whom, specifically? In which contexts are these supposed to be true, and what are the exceptions to the rule? What are these generalizing statements supposed to illustrate, and why should I trust the information you're giving me?" then it's not going to be a pleasant experience here.
i enjoy creative ways to impart knowledge. nice-sounding paragraphs and ample use of fresh metaphors and other figures of speech make nonfiction fun for the reader, of course. but too much of this and too little of concrete, factual evidence takes away from the pleasure of reading nonfiction, at least for someone who expected much more. this may as well have been a prose poetry collection instead. re: my expectations of much more, it's because this book is being sold as "part memoir, part scientific exploration, and part cultural commentary," (quoted verbatim from its description) but imo it should be sold purely as memoir instead, as in, "things i found out about language from MY experience in a lab, and as someone who grew up learning to speak multiple languages." that way i wouldn't have set my own expectations about this in the way that i did.
tl;dr i am not this book's target audience which i would've figured out right away had the description for it been written differently, but i'm sure its target audience is out there aplenty.
Thank you to FSG Publishing and NetGalley for giving temporary access to an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
this review was going to start on a positive note, i was sure of it, until i reached the part about the argument about a conservative and a liberal making meanings.
information is neutral. it's the telling of it that gets charged with political bias, and i regret to note that political bias is very much blatant here. i for one don't generally associate with myself with either label, finding both of them lacking in nuance (the extremes of either one is vomit-inducing for me for their inaccuracy in reflecting my personal beliefs) but Sedivy is apparently conservative-leaning, at least according to that one paragraph that attempts to describe the difference between the thinking processes of the two.
moving forward, i started scrutinizing each sentence for other things that would make me squint dubiously. the rest of this review will be written with this aforementioned knowledge in mind, just a fair warning.
it does consistently use the words "poetry" and "music" interchangeably, important to note if you're a poet and/or a musician and would like to contend with the syntactical choice.
some subsequent sections address the author's Mother which is a lovely tribute imo.
there are assertions about children that feel under-researched, or otherwise are probably drawing more from personal experience than fact, such as the assertion about children's beliefs (which, would've been presented better if a disclaimer about it were present, as in, if the author labeled such statements as reflection of personal experience rather than a generalization derived from peer-reviewed scientific research.) i think i got this impression from the distinct lack of specific experiences narrated to illustrate the assertions.
If you can enjoy a nonfiction book written with "lyrical" prose (not the adjective I would use, but I'll borrow that word from the book's description) without asking for more information, you'll probably be okay enjoying this book for what it is, but if you're like me and go "Like what? According to whom, specifically? In which contexts are these supposed to be true, and what are the exceptions to the rule? What are these generalizing statements supposed to illustrate, and why should I trust the information you're giving me?" then it's not going to be a pleasant experience here.
i enjoy creative ways to impart knowledge. nice-sounding paragraphs and ample use of fresh metaphors and other figures of speech make nonfiction fun for the reader, of course. but too much of this and too little of concrete, factual evidence takes away from the pleasure of reading nonfiction, at least for someone who expected much more. this may as well have been a prose poetry collection instead. re: my expectations of much more, it's because this book is being sold as "part memoir, part scientific exploration, and part cultural commentary," (quoted verbatim from its description) but imo it should be sold purely as memoir instead, as in, "things i found out about language from MY experience in a lab, and as someone who grew up learning to speak multiple languages." that way i wouldn't have set my own expectations about this in the way that i did.
tl;dr i am not this book's target audience which i would've figured out right away had the description for it been written differently, but i'm sure its target audience is out there aplenty.
Thank you to FSG Publishing and NetGalley for giving temporary access to an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
September 7, 2024
I loved Linguaphile! It’s beautifully written and a fascinating look into language and how we acquire it, interpret it, and use it - whether written, spoken, or signed. It made me reflect on my own relationship with language, particularly as a bilingual person who used one language at home and another in school from a young age.
Throughout the book, the author also addresses links between language and social norms; for instance, how men and women are perceived as speakers when using the same linguistic signals, and how communication styles and interpretation can differ around the world. In doing so, she includes many different insights and perspectives from various cultures, age groups, and genders as well as the use of signed languages and Protactile language.
Rather than being a solely academic text, Linguaphile is part-memoir. I feel that this personal aspect and outlook makes a book like this more accessible to a wide range of readers, who will be able to compare and contrast with their own life experiences of, and relationships with, language. For those who want to dive deeper into the world of linguistics, there is a comprehensive list of sources in the Notes section at the end of the book.
I think this is a book I’ll be returning to, and it’s certainly one I would be happy to recommend to anyone with an interest in languages and communication!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. All views are my own.
Throughout the book, the author also addresses links between language and social norms; for instance, how men and women are perceived as speakers when using the same linguistic signals, and how communication styles and interpretation can differ around the world. In doing so, she includes many different insights and perspectives from various cultures, age groups, and genders as well as the use of signed languages and Protactile language.
Rather than being a solely academic text, Linguaphile is part-memoir. I feel that this personal aspect and outlook makes a book like this more accessible to a wide range of readers, who will be able to compare and contrast with their own life experiences of, and relationships with, language. For those who want to dive deeper into the world of linguistics, there is a comprehensive list of sources in the Notes section at the end of the book.
I think this is a book I’ll be returning to, and it’s certainly one I would be happy to recommend to anyone with an interest in languages and communication!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. All views are my own.
February 27, 2025
to describe something so ineffable as language, it only seems necessary to rely on other, more graspable subjects as entrypoints.
like science: psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics (which, admittedly, felt a bit didactic and cold at times).
like the words of writers and artists, encased in ink and paper.
like memories of a childhood, lived events whose images can be played back in one's mind.
but as inconceivable as it may sound, what emerges is something yet more ineffable than language itself: the love of language, a life devoted to it.
i loved language the way you adore a person, in their details, in the way they have taken control of your senses. i loved how language could shape the vagueness of a human voice into something precise...
like science: psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics (which, admittedly, felt a bit didactic and cold at times).
like the words of writers and artists, encased in ink and paper.
like memories of a childhood, lived events whose images can be played back in one's mind.
but as inconceivable as it may sound, what emerges is something yet more ineffable than language itself: the love of language, a life devoted to it.
i loved language the way you adore a person, in their details, in the way they have taken control of your senses. i loved how language could shape the vagueness of a human voice into something precise...
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April 9, 2024I have officially arrived! I just got my first eARC (from Farrar, Straus & Giroux) via NetGalley! My life will never be the same again—and I will possibly lose my job, as I spend even more time reading. Can't wait to start on this one! Exclamation marks all around!
October 2, 2025
Much of the Science is Interesting, Though it Comes at the Cost of Wading Through the Author's Self-Therapy
This was a Book Club read, and it wasn't my favorite! Though I enjoyed many of the scientific insights, I was far less drawn to the flowery, pretentious prose and not a fan of the author's voice in general.
*Brief Synopsis: Julie Sedivy is a polyglot and a linguist, and in the three parts of the book details her multilingual immigrant childhood, her divorce, and the deaths of her father and brother. She weaves scientific/linguistic insights (some better-woven into the thread of the story than others) throughout the largely autobiographical text.
*Scientific Insights That Resonated:
-Infants warm to their mother tongue from within the womb, and can distinguish it from other languages at birth! "Infants suck (their pacifiers) more eagerly when they hear their mother tongue--even when spoken by strangers over a loudspeaker--than when a foreign language is emitted from the speaker."
-Even among people who ostensibly speak the same language, the actual definitions of each word change drastically depending on how you live, what you believe, and how you were raised, to the point that linguists question whether people of opposing political parties, for example, are actually speaking two different languages. "I have read studies suggesting that entirely different thoughts are summoned when people of liberal and conservative political leanings say the words 'right' and 'wrong.' ... The meanings of even these most fundamental of words diverge: a conservative, apparently, would utter the word 'wrong' when confronted with a person cleaning their toilet with a national flag. ... A literal, though dismayed or disgusted, might say: 'Where's the harm? I'll tell you where the harm is. The harm is in the disenfranchisement of the poor and the racialized.' ... When I hear he words uttered by the citizens of present-day America, it is all to easy for me to draw up a partial list of the words upon whose meanings we cannot, as a nation, seem to agree: Citizen. Person. Family. Science. Fairness. Evidence. Baby. Evil. Pride. ... We may live in an illusion of agreement, believing ourselves to speak the same language, but these words reveal the canyons that have opened up between us."
-There's a good snippet about how multilinguists "pluck words and phrases from each language and arrange them artfully." It reminds me of how there are no truetranslations for some of my favorite words in Spanish (denuncia, ahorita, echar ganas) or Mandarin (yiwei).
-On the joy of reading: "Next to my literary companions, my conversational partners were pitifully few in number, and those I had were all more or less alike. They were unlikely to reroute the path of science, or to rouse a freshly founded nation, or to murder anyone. ... There were certain girls, not to mention boys, whom I would not have been allowed to bring home. But as long as they could be hidden between the covers of a book, I could smuggle any dubious companion into my room and shut the door." Also, the author is refreshingly skeptical about the value of speed-reading, arguing that doing so can remove the taste of the language
-On the power dynamics of language, in this case in the context of date rape: "Only one person in the room seems to be permitted the luxury of misunderstanding the other." And, later, "Several studies found that when female speakers delivered a message with the markers of 'tentative' language, they were found to be less persuasive than their assertive counterparts; the influence of male speakers, on the other hand, remained undiluted by the presence of hesitations, hedges, or qualifiers. Perhaps a presumption of competence dulled the listeners' perception of signals present in the speech. ... Easy enough to advise women to speak for success; more difficult to know exactly what that is. More difficult yet, apparently, is listening to what a woman is saying rather than how she is saying it."
-On the universal associations of certain words and concepts: "The most beautiful color is blue. The best-loved compositions ... depict water, an open sky, green vegetation, animals roaming over hills, humans in repose." Similarly, "There are some features that are commonly found in awe-inducing stimuli: a sense of spatial vastness or power, exceptional human qualities or achievements, informational complexity, intense beauty."
-She describes some fascinating science about why we sometimes stumble over or lose words in the middle of speaking, and makes a case for the value of filler "um" sounds. It is more likely to happen when "the speaker has a vast body of knowledge or vocabulary to riffle through as she plans her sentence; highly knowledgeable speakers, it turns out, speak less fluently than others about their subject of expertise. To reassure the listener that thought is ongoing and will soon be making its appearance in the form of speech, the speaker emits a sound that is familiar to them both: 'ah', 'um', ... and so on. These vocalizations are not acknowledged as meaningful in any dictionary, but they are far from empty. They are a way for the speaker to alert the listener, 'Hold on. I'm doing something difficult. I'll be with you momentarily.' The equivalent of a spinning circle on a computer screen, if you will. The listener takes note. Anticipating a reason for the delay, his mind snaps to attention; after all, something that is difficult to say is likely to be difficult to understand. Thus alerted, the listener recognizes the subsequent word more quickly. ... When narrative speech is stripped of all disfluencies in the lab, listeners find it more difficult to understand or remember than when it is naturally seasoned with "ahs" or "ums."
-On a related note, I found this excerpt fascinating: "Certain patterns of speech errors revealed that speakers chose words well in advance of uttering them, but waited until the last moment before speech to attend to their pronunciation. That is, when a word is plucked from the past's storehouse and lined up for future utterance, it is a naked concept, not yet clothed in sound, presumably to avoid the burden of holding in active memory all the details of its pronunciation. One can imagine memory as a harried stage manager, able to keep track of which performers are to exit the wings in what order, but not the details of their costumes; these are left to a wardrobe specialist who hastily dresses each performer before they step onto the stage. Thus, a speaker might easily say, 'We ordered a new library for the third floor of the desk,' having exchanged the words 'library' and 'desk' in error. The error reveals that the word-concept 'library' was pulled from memory well before its appearance in the sentence, and as a result it was milling about backstage, where it was mistakenly tagged by the manager for premature entry; the wardrobe assistant, not questioning its place in line, compliantly clothed it in its designated sounds. ... Under these and many other investigations, the act of speaking reveals itself as an acrobatic, time-defying performance that is somehow pulled off-but just barely—by a troupe of artists pushed to the very edges of their energies and abilities."
-There was a cool bit about the translation of landmark poems into sign, as when Bernard Brag used "signs that repeated handshapes or movement paths, much as a hearing poet might make use of assonance and alliteration. He ... created recurring patterns of movement." So cool.
-She writes that language recovery becomes more difficult with age when practiced in non-real-world laboratory settings, but that the elderly's language retrieval mechanisms are highly contextualized and often match those of the young in the real world. Pretty cool!
-Some guidance on writing: "Maggie Nelson reveals that writing 'feels like a forced, daily encounter with limits.' ... 'Art is like having a nail file and being in prison and trying to get out,' says British artist Sarah Lucas."
*What Rubbed Me the Wrong Way: One of my biggest pet peeves in a book is when authors use published works as exercises in self-therapy. Sedivy publicly aired a lot of dirty laundry in this book (including her mother's failure to assert she (Sedivy) was pretty as a teenager, her decision to leave her ex-husband and their protracted divorce process, and her estrangement from her father), and I just think that's bad practice. I invariably feel bad for autobiographers' families when this happens. One thing that made this practice even more objectionable to me was that this book was ostensibly couched as science-oriented. Bottom line: the self-therapy element was a big turn-off for me. This in addition to my general impression that I don't think I would enjoy getting to know Sedivy very much. She came across as pretentious and arrogant, apparently bragging about how great she was for speaking multiple languages, how she's a self-taught literature/reading savant, and how she's an outside-the-box thinker. I got so aggravated when she talked about how she rendered one marriage counseling/mediation questionnaire unscorable by marking both the "1" and the "5" answers on the Likert scale, and OH SO FRUSTRATED by all the intentionally obfuscating sentences she used to make her points about "running aground" while reading (e.g., "The wife passed the test refused to fill it out."), when a few courteous "thats" or commas could so easily clarify meanings to readers. As Lynne Truss writes in my favorite book on grammar "Eats Shoots and Leaves," punctuation is "a courtesy designed to help readers understand a story without stumbling". I understand that Sedivy introduced these sentences in the context of her study on the microseconds readers spend to interpret written sentences, but in her book she seemed to revel in denying readers that courtesy and then judging them/us for not catching the meaning immediately, as she no doubt would have.
I had initially marked this book down as 2 stars but, on reviewing the many scientific snippets I enjoyed, I bumped it up to 3. I found the messenger problematic, but/and the message pretty interesting.
This was a Book Club read, and it wasn't my favorite! Though I enjoyed many of the scientific insights, I was far less drawn to the flowery, pretentious prose and not a fan of the author's voice in general.
*Brief Synopsis: Julie Sedivy is a polyglot and a linguist, and in the three parts of the book details her multilingual immigrant childhood, her divorce, and the deaths of her father and brother. She weaves scientific/linguistic insights (some better-woven into the thread of the story than others) throughout the largely autobiographical text.
*Scientific Insights That Resonated:
-Infants warm to their mother tongue from within the womb, and can distinguish it from other languages at birth! "Infants suck (their pacifiers) more eagerly when they hear their mother tongue--even when spoken by strangers over a loudspeaker--than when a foreign language is emitted from the speaker."
-Even among people who ostensibly speak the same language, the actual definitions of each word change drastically depending on how you live, what you believe, and how you were raised, to the point that linguists question whether people of opposing political parties, for example, are actually speaking two different languages. "I have read studies suggesting that entirely different thoughts are summoned when people of liberal and conservative political leanings say the words 'right' and 'wrong.' ... The meanings of even these most fundamental of words diverge: a conservative, apparently, would utter the word 'wrong' when confronted with a person cleaning their toilet with a national flag. ... A literal, though dismayed or disgusted, might say: 'Where's the harm? I'll tell you where the harm is. The harm is in the disenfranchisement of the poor and the racialized.' ... When I hear he words uttered by the citizens of present-day America, it is all to easy for me to draw up a partial list of the words upon whose meanings we cannot, as a nation, seem to agree: Citizen. Person. Family. Science. Fairness. Evidence. Baby. Evil. Pride. ... We may live in an illusion of agreement, believing ourselves to speak the same language, but these words reveal the canyons that have opened up between us."
-There's a good snippet about how multilinguists "pluck words and phrases from each language and arrange them artfully." It reminds me of how there are no truetranslations for some of my favorite words in Spanish (denuncia, ahorita, echar ganas) or Mandarin (yiwei).
-On the joy of reading: "Next to my literary companions, my conversational partners were pitifully few in number, and those I had were all more or less alike. They were unlikely to reroute the path of science, or to rouse a freshly founded nation, or to murder anyone. ... There were certain girls, not to mention boys, whom I would not have been allowed to bring home. But as long as they could be hidden between the covers of a book, I could smuggle any dubious companion into my room and shut the door." Also, the author is refreshingly skeptical about the value of speed-reading, arguing that doing so can remove the taste of the language
-On the power dynamics of language, in this case in the context of date rape: "Only one person in the room seems to be permitted the luxury of misunderstanding the other." And, later, "Several studies found that when female speakers delivered a message with the markers of 'tentative' language, they were found to be less persuasive than their assertive counterparts; the influence of male speakers, on the other hand, remained undiluted by the presence of hesitations, hedges, or qualifiers. Perhaps a presumption of competence dulled the listeners' perception of signals present in the speech. ... Easy enough to advise women to speak for success; more difficult to know exactly what that is. More difficult yet, apparently, is listening to what a woman is saying rather than how she is saying it."
-On the universal associations of certain words and concepts: "The most beautiful color is blue. The best-loved compositions ... depict water, an open sky, green vegetation, animals roaming over hills, humans in repose." Similarly, "There are some features that are commonly found in awe-inducing stimuli: a sense of spatial vastness or power, exceptional human qualities or achievements, informational complexity, intense beauty."
-She describes some fascinating science about why we sometimes stumble over or lose words in the middle of speaking, and makes a case for the value of filler "um" sounds. It is more likely to happen when "the speaker has a vast body of knowledge or vocabulary to riffle through as she plans her sentence; highly knowledgeable speakers, it turns out, speak less fluently than others about their subject of expertise. To reassure the listener that thought is ongoing and will soon be making its appearance in the form of speech, the speaker emits a sound that is familiar to them both: 'ah', 'um', ... and so on. These vocalizations are not acknowledged as meaningful in any dictionary, but they are far from empty. They are a way for the speaker to alert the listener, 'Hold on. I'm doing something difficult. I'll be with you momentarily.' The equivalent of a spinning circle on a computer screen, if you will. The listener takes note. Anticipating a reason for the delay, his mind snaps to attention; after all, something that is difficult to say is likely to be difficult to understand. Thus alerted, the listener recognizes the subsequent word more quickly. ... When narrative speech is stripped of all disfluencies in the lab, listeners find it more difficult to understand or remember than when it is naturally seasoned with "ahs" or "ums."
-On a related note, I found this excerpt fascinating: "Certain patterns of speech errors revealed that speakers chose words well in advance of uttering them, but waited until the last moment before speech to attend to their pronunciation. That is, when a word is plucked from the past's storehouse and lined up for future utterance, it is a naked concept, not yet clothed in sound, presumably to avoid the burden of holding in active memory all the details of its pronunciation. One can imagine memory as a harried stage manager, able to keep track of which performers are to exit the wings in what order, but not the details of their costumes; these are left to a wardrobe specialist who hastily dresses each performer before they step onto the stage. Thus, a speaker might easily say, 'We ordered a new library for the third floor of the desk,' having exchanged the words 'library' and 'desk' in error. The error reveals that the word-concept 'library' was pulled from memory well before its appearance in the sentence, and as a result it was milling about backstage, where it was mistakenly tagged by the manager for premature entry; the wardrobe assistant, not questioning its place in line, compliantly clothed it in its designated sounds. ... Under these and many other investigations, the act of speaking reveals itself as an acrobatic, time-defying performance that is somehow pulled off-but just barely—by a troupe of artists pushed to the very edges of their energies and abilities."
-There was a cool bit about the translation of landmark poems into sign, as when Bernard Brag used "signs that repeated handshapes or movement paths, much as a hearing poet might make use of assonance and alliteration. He ... created recurring patterns of movement." So cool.
-She writes that language recovery becomes more difficult with age when practiced in non-real-world laboratory settings, but that the elderly's language retrieval mechanisms are highly contextualized and often match those of the young in the real world. Pretty cool!
-Some guidance on writing: "Maggie Nelson reveals that writing 'feels like a forced, daily encounter with limits.' ... 'Art is like having a nail file and being in prison and trying to get out,' says British artist Sarah Lucas."
*What Rubbed Me the Wrong Way: One of my biggest pet peeves in a book is when authors use published works as exercises in self-therapy. Sedivy publicly aired a lot of dirty laundry in this book (including her mother's failure to assert she (Sedivy) was pretty as a teenager, her decision to leave her ex-husband and their protracted divorce process, and her estrangement from her father), and I just think that's bad practice. I invariably feel bad for autobiographers' families when this happens. One thing that made this practice even more objectionable to me was that this book was ostensibly couched as science-oriented. Bottom line: the self-therapy element was a big turn-off for me. This in addition to my general impression that I don't think I would enjoy getting to know Sedivy very much. She came across as pretentious and arrogant, apparently bragging about how great she was for speaking multiple languages, how she's a self-taught literature/reading savant, and how she's an outside-the-box thinker. I got so aggravated when she talked about how she rendered one marriage counseling/mediation questionnaire unscorable by marking both the "1" and the "5" answers on the Likert scale, and OH SO FRUSTRATED by all the intentionally obfuscating sentences she used to make her points about "running aground" while reading (e.g., "The wife passed the test refused to fill it out."), when a few courteous "thats" or commas could so easily clarify meanings to readers. As Lynne Truss writes in my favorite book on grammar "Eats Shoots and Leaves," punctuation is "a courtesy designed to help readers understand a story without stumbling". I understand that Sedivy introduced these sentences in the context of her study on the microseconds readers spend to interpret written sentences, but in her book she seemed to revel in denying readers that courtesy and then judging them/us for not catching the meaning immediately, as she no doubt would have.
I had initially marked this book down as 2 stars but, on reviewing the many scientific snippets I enjoyed, I bumped it up to 3. I found the messenger problematic, but/and the message pretty interesting.
December 8, 2025
I expected something different and struggled a lot to get into it. Maybe the mix of personal memoir and excursions into linguistics didn't help to get into my reading stride. I would have preferred a more professional use of references and a further reading list. I did let it roll for the final chapters though.
March 16, 2025
An ode to the power and possibilities of language
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy is a deeply engaging and fascinating book about language — how we shape it and how it shapes us, our perceptions and society. Now a doctor of linguistics, Sedivy learned to speak multiple languages as a child, adding the richness of learned experience to her academic expertise. Even better, she’s a truly talented writer.
Early on, she details how her unique childhood was shaped by language:
“I felt I was made of language—that my soul was the product of all the language fragments that had blown my way and accumulated into a semblance of a whole, all of them held together by my ardor for their alchemies of sound and meaning.”
Next, she provides a deeper analysis of the simple miracle underlying the birth and evolution of language, something we so often take for granted in the moment.
“Language was created word by word, each word conceived in a moment of yoked attention, one person proposing and another acquiescing to a particular union of sound and meaning. Language is the totality of such moments, multiplied within the kaleidoscope of an entire community.”
Later, the book moves into how we begin learning language at birth (and even sooner) and how that process feeds into efforts to understand the world around us.
“The more we come to know, the more our words become private islands from which we scan the horizon for approaching ships.”
Ultimately, as Sedivy points out, language is a shared endeavor that underlies, supports and shapes the thing that makes humans so unique: our ability to socialize:
“The loneliness of private meanings is intolerable, and because of this, we search for enclaves of agreement.”
And far from a static, closed system, language is fluid and ever-evolving.
“…dictionaries—perhaps like all sacred texts—are not legal prescriptions but approximate records of the agreements struck by people who decide to inhabit the same language. Lexicographers know they do not legislate.”
Particularly appealing was a deep dive into how reading wholly depends on spoken language.”
“Objectively, learning to read should be much easier than learning to speak a language; it is far less impressive an achievement. To break into the written word, all one has to do is discover the trick of matching a handful of visual marks on the page with certain sounds. The rest is parasitic on spoken language. But to learn the spoken language in the first place is to extract from rivers of sound enough bricks of meaning to fill a warehouse and then to discern all the secret, untaught rules that organize these bricks and combine them in limitless ways—a set of rules so complicated that it takes the lifelong labors of many linguists merely to describe them.”
It’s a wild and deeply satisfying read, filled with insights, personal reminisces, interesting facts (such as how disfluency — speakers who use “uh” and “uhm” — actually draw more attention), and some downright infuriating insights about masculine versus feminine aspects of language and the barriers that can create.
“…uptalk, a stereotypical marker of powerlessness, patterned differently for male and female contestants on the Jeopardy! game show. The lower a man’s winnings, the more uptalk was evident in his speech; for a woman, the more money she’d amassed, the more likely she was to lift her statements into questions, perhaps out of instinct to avoid the appearance of gloating.”
The book ends with a challenging look at senescence and how mortality presages the end of our mutually beneficial relationship with language as we desperately try not to forget how to speak.
“The words we once shared with certain others dissolve like the pages of a dictionary left out in the rain.”
Equal parts scholarly work and love letter, I enjoyed immersing myself in her ode to language, learning so much and letting myself be carried along by her passion and lyrical writing. Highly recommend.
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy is a deeply engaging and fascinating book about language — how we shape it and how it shapes us, our perceptions and society. Now a doctor of linguistics, Sedivy learned to speak multiple languages as a child, adding the richness of learned experience to her academic expertise. Even better, she’s a truly talented writer.
Early on, she details how her unique childhood was shaped by language:
“I felt I was made of language—that my soul was the product of all the language fragments that had blown my way and accumulated into a semblance of a whole, all of them held together by my ardor for their alchemies of sound and meaning.”
Next, she provides a deeper analysis of the simple miracle underlying the birth and evolution of language, something we so often take for granted in the moment.
“Language was created word by word, each word conceived in a moment of yoked attention, one person proposing and another acquiescing to a particular union of sound and meaning. Language is the totality of such moments, multiplied within the kaleidoscope of an entire community.”
Later, the book moves into how we begin learning language at birth (and even sooner) and how that process feeds into efforts to understand the world around us.
“The more we come to know, the more our words become private islands from which we scan the horizon for approaching ships.”
Ultimately, as Sedivy points out, language is a shared endeavor that underlies, supports and shapes the thing that makes humans so unique: our ability to socialize:
“The loneliness of private meanings is intolerable, and because of this, we search for enclaves of agreement.”
And far from a static, closed system, language is fluid and ever-evolving.
“…dictionaries—perhaps like all sacred texts—are not legal prescriptions but approximate records of the agreements struck by people who decide to inhabit the same language. Lexicographers know they do not legislate.”
Particularly appealing was a deep dive into how reading wholly depends on spoken language.”
“Objectively, learning to read should be much easier than learning to speak a language; it is far less impressive an achievement. To break into the written word, all one has to do is discover the trick of matching a handful of visual marks on the page with certain sounds. The rest is parasitic on spoken language. But to learn the spoken language in the first place is to extract from rivers of sound enough bricks of meaning to fill a warehouse and then to discern all the secret, untaught rules that organize these bricks and combine them in limitless ways—a set of rules so complicated that it takes the lifelong labors of many linguists merely to describe them.”
It’s a wild and deeply satisfying read, filled with insights, personal reminisces, interesting facts (such as how disfluency — speakers who use “uh” and “uhm” — actually draw more attention), and some downright infuriating insights about masculine versus feminine aspects of language and the barriers that can create.
“…uptalk, a stereotypical marker of powerlessness, patterned differently for male and female contestants on the Jeopardy! game show. The lower a man’s winnings, the more uptalk was evident in his speech; for a woman, the more money she’d amassed, the more likely she was to lift her statements into questions, perhaps out of instinct to avoid the appearance of gloating.”
The book ends with a challenging look at senescence and how mortality presages the end of our mutually beneficial relationship with language as we desperately try not to forget how to speak.
“The words we once shared with certain others dissolve like the pages of a dictionary left out in the rain.”
Equal parts scholarly work and love letter, I enjoyed immersing myself in her ode to language, learning so much and letting myself be carried along by her passion and lyrical writing. Highly recommend.
November 18, 2024
Julie Sedivy’s Linguaphile is a series of very long essays about the author’s experience with learning languages and her love for languages.
The author draws a lot from her personal and professional experience as a linguist. The book is very well researched, but that wasn’t really evident when I was reading it because the bibliography and citations are not mentioned until the very end, so for most of the book, it felt that the author was drawing her own conclusions instead. A lot of statements felt like it was stated to be truth when it really does just reflect upon the author’s own experiences.
I also thought that the author’s use of flowery language and metaphoric prose was quite excessive, as well as her segues into her divorce and proceedings. This book really could have benefited from editing, and it wasn’t immediately clear that this is less about the study of linguistics and more personal essays/memoir format.
However, there are some wonderful ideas about languages and how it enriches your life and changes your perspective about your relationship to different cultures, and the author is a thoughtful and introspective author.
Thank you, NetGalley and the publishing team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing a complimentary eARC for review.
The author draws a lot from her personal and professional experience as a linguist. The book is very well researched, but that wasn’t really evident when I was reading it because the bibliography and citations are not mentioned until the very end, so for most of the book, it felt that the author was drawing her own conclusions instead. A lot of statements felt like it was stated to be truth when it really does just reflect upon the author’s own experiences.
I also thought that the author’s use of flowery language and metaphoric prose was quite excessive, as well as her segues into her divorce and proceedings. This book really could have benefited from editing, and it wasn’t immediately clear that this is less about the study of linguistics and more personal essays/memoir format.
However, there are some wonderful ideas about languages and how it enriches your life and changes your perspective about your relationship to different cultures, and the author is a thoughtful and introspective author.
Thank you, NetGalley and the publishing team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing a complimentary eARC for review.
April 16, 2025
I expected more.
December 24, 2025
What a delight! Informative, entertaining, beautiful, and profound.
Sedivy uses her own life to frame a meditation on human interaction with language over the course of a lifetime, how language is learned and acquired in childhood, used and confused in adulthood, and lost and transformed with age and misfortune. She delves deeply into science and sociology without even a whiff of the dry, technical language often associated with academic writing. Sedivy is a wonder with imagery and metaphor and word combinations that are full of energy and life. Her passion for language is embodied in every sentence she writes.
Starting with her wildly multilingual childhood and moving through her life to her current, near-elderly state having new trouble recalling words, discerning speech in noisy environments, and facing the fear of a stroke that damages the linguistic part of her brain, Sedivy covers a wealth of topics, including her professional work as a linguist, the differences between written and spoken language, poetry, sign language, and so much more. Chapters can vary in style, such as the reflection on her youth composed as a letter to her mother and the one titled "How to Be a Success!" that debunks many myths in that realm.
This is a great book for: anyone, such as educators and parents, who helps children acquire language and literacy; anyone who wants insight into better language for interacting with others; anyone who worries about language loss with age; anyone who writes; and anyone who loves reading. Highly recommended.
A couple of samples:
Sedivy uses her own life to frame a meditation on human interaction with language over the course of a lifetime, how language is learned and acquired in childhood, used and confused in adulthood, and lost and transformed with age and misfortune. She delves deeply into science and sociology without even a whiff of the dry, technical language often associated with academic writing. Sedivy is a wonder with imagery and metaphor and word combinations that are full of energy and life. Her passion for language is embodied in every sentence she writes.
Starting with her wildly multilingual childhood and moving through her life to her current, near-elderly state having new trouble recalling words, discerning speech in noisy environments, and facing the fear of a stroke that damages the linguistic part of her brain, Sedivy covers a wealth of topics, including her professional work as a linguist, the differences between written and spoken language, poetry, sign language, and so much more. Chapters can vary in style, such as the reflection on her youth composed as a letter to her mother and the one titled "How to Be a Success!" that debunks many myths in that realm.
This is a great book for: anyone, such as educators and parents, who helps children acquire language and literacy; anyone who wants insight into better language for interacting with others; anyone who worries about language loss with age; anyone who writes; and anyone who loves reading. Highly recommended.
A couple of samples:
A newborn's vocation is to find order in a world that advertises itself as a random assault on the senses. There is no curriculum. No prefabricated bricks of structure. But the baby is equipped with a dogged faith that language, indeed reality itself, does have order and structure, that it wants to settle and arrange itself into patterns and motifs. This faith is amply rewarded.
In the child's mind, what separates the beloved language from foreign burble is the order stitching it together. The infant intuits structure from beneath every surface of language. Under the noses of adults who have no idea of the scholarship taking place in their presence, their child begins a secret, analytical love affair with the patterns discerned in languages sounds.
Order begins at the pulsing center of language, as if a fetus were somehow conditioned, by nearness to its mother's heart, to seek out the regularity of rhythm that propels speech forward. Each language has something that sounds like a heartbeat, but its fundamental principles can vary. . . . Even newborns can hear the rhythmic differences between these languages, whether or not they have heard them before, and they group together languages that operate on similar principles.
-----
I may look and sound as if I have declared my sole allegiance to the English language, but in truth I am a cacophony of voices, influencing each other, at times assisting each other, at times getting in each other's ways, always vying for turf. I do not always agree with myself. Each of my languages comes not only with its own patterns of sound and methods for arranging words but also with its social habits and its judgments about what to forgive, what to condemn, and what to revere. They do squabble.
This cacophony may seem like confusion, but what if it is really the natural state of being human? Who among us, regardless of the number of languages they speak, is subject to a single set of influences? Who can say they are of one mind about what they forgive, condemn, and revere, that they are never blown about in multiple directions? Does a person of uncomplicated allegiances exist, anywhere, in any language? Perhaps when our societies converge upon a single language, it is also a way of obscuring who we really are.
May 27, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!
Dr. Julie Sedivy’s Linguaphile is a poppy celebration of language that favors simplicity over substance.
Sedivy has a remarkable ability to synthesize basic linguistic concepts into a manageable package, reframing them in accessible terms. That said, this is probably a better book for readers who haven’t put much thought into language, as the author often reduces these ideas to generalizations that amount to “Isn’t reading magical?!?!” or “There’s a lot of subtext in language.” To be clear, these are important points, and I appreciate the journey Sedivy takes us on to get to them, but it feels like a hike that promises a waterfall and delivers a creek—they feel trite because of their extended setup.
The later sections of the book feel more fruitful, as Sedivy writes directly about some of her research. In particular, her exploration of syntax in “The Rectilinear Movement of Time” is exciting and informative, perfectly threading the needle between analysis and simple language philosophy. Likewise, I found all the discussion of her eye-tracking studies to be really fascinating, though it’s quickly undermined by a (frankly) meanspirited take on the dissolution of the author’s marriage. It’s a pivot that feels indicative of the book’s larger issues.
All of the memoirish scaffolding that Sedivy uses begins to obscure her actual points, which feels like a betrayal of the audience, the author, and the form. Good memoir is tacitly built on the premise that writers will dignify everyone they write about with honesty, including themselves. That means depicting people in all their kindness and cruelty; it means recognizing one’s own faults as much as one’s strengths. In Linguaphile, the author constantly reminds readers that she has been exceptional her whole life, whereas many of the people surrounding her have not. In a different book, these topics might feel at home, but here, they read more like this was the only outlet the author could find to air her frustrations. Similarly, her reliance on art and poetry often feels ill-informed and under-developed, distracting from the discussion rather than clarifying it.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel that Sedivy’s authorial strengths lend themselves to the tone and style she uses in Linguaphile. It’s a matter of subjective taste, but she writes with a performatively elevated diction, similar to what you might hear in a graduation speech or a TedTalk. It's a manufactured "artfulness." In those short-form outlets, it might be a powerful approach, but it can’t sustain hundreds of pages here. It's disappointing because I’m certain that if I took a class with Dr. Sedivy, she would be one of my favorite professors; I probably would have loved this book as a freshman linguistics student too—it’s just that her communication style doesn’t translate well to print.
With all of those caveats in mind, I think this book is probably a great choice for readers who want to reflect more on the mysteries of language. It likely won’t be groundbreaking for most people, but it might be thought-provoking, and sometimes that’s enough!
Also, if anybody asks, I was definitely NOT energized by the section on sentence diagrams. (ugh, I love sentence diagrams.)
Dr. Julie Sedivy’s Linguaphile is a poppy celebration of language that favors simplicity over substance.
Sedivy has a remarkable ability to synthesize basic linguistic concepts into a manageable package, reframing them in accessible terms. That said, this is probably a better book for readers who haven’t put much thought into language, as the author often reduces these ideas to generalizations that amount to “Isn’t reading magical?!?!” or “There’s a lot of subtext in language.” To be clear, these are important points, and I appreciate the journey Sedivy takes us on to get to them, but it feels like a hike that promises a waterfall and delivers a creek—they feel trite because of their extended setup.
The later sections of the book feel more fruitful, as Sedivy writes directly about some of her research. In particular, her exploration of syntax in “The Rectilinear Movement of Time” is exciting and informative, perfectly threading the needle between analysis and simple language philosophy. Likewise, I found all the discussion of her eye-tracking studies to be really fascinating, though it’s quickly undermined by a (frankly) meanspirited take on the dissolution of the author’s marriage. It’s a pivot that feels indicative of the book’s larger issues.
All of the memoirish scaffolding that Sedivy uses begins to obscure her actual points, which feels like a betrayal of the audience, the author, and the form. Good memoir is tacitly built on the premise that writers will dignify everyone they write about with honesty, including themselves. That means depicting people in all their kindness and cruelty; it means recognizing one’s own faults as much as one’s strengths. In Linguaphile, the author constantly reminds readers that she has been exceptional her whole life, whereas many of the people surrounding her have not. In a different book, these topics might feel at home, but here, they read more like this was the only outlet the author could find to air her frustrations. Similarly, her reliance on art and poetry often feels ill-informed and under-developed, distracting from the discussion rather than clarifying it.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel that Sedivy’s authorial strengths lend themselves to the tone and style she uses in Linguaphile. It’s a matter of subjective taste, but she writes with a performatively elevated diction, similar to what you might hear in a graduation speech or a TedTalk. It's a manufactured "artfulness." In those short-form outlets, it might be a powerful approach, but it can’t sustain hundreds of pages here. It's disappointing because I’m certain that if I took a class with Dr. Sedivy, she would be one of my favorite professors; I probably would have loved this book as a freshman linguistics student too—it’s just that her communication style doesn’t translate well to print.
With all of those caveats in mind, I think this book is probably a great choice for readers who want to reflect more on the mysteries of language. It likely won’t be groundbreaking for most people, but it might be thought-provoking, and sometimes that’s enough!
Also, if anybody asks, I was definitely NOT energized by the section on sentence diagrams. (ugh, I love sentence diagrams.)
September 30, 2024
Growing up multilingual, Sedivy loved language. She would be a writer.
That is, until she walks into a Linguistics class and sees a world opened up. There's science behind language. She now loves language, and the science of it.
We share a passion for language. Like her, part of my curriculum at University was Psycholinguistics. (and sociolinguistics, and several other classes, so there's more differences than overlap there) I cannot judge other readers' love for language, but Sedivy's is clear from the page. If you pick up this book thinking this is your next memoir, you are wrong. She tells us how she acquired languages (moving from one country to the other) how it felt to be lacking in the dominant language, and what people conclude from that fact. She lets you know there's love, and a divorce, but these chapters too are all written focusing on the language used, explaining how users of language add meaning to words, and deduct meaning from sentences and as a reader you are no closer to knowing the details of her marriage falling apart (and yet, it's there, she wrote it, even why it did).
Sedivy reaches meno-pause in her memoir, and grasps with words sometimes failing her.
Again, her book talks about her life in a few sentences, and paints it in with lots and lots of research - I found it to be compelling, fascinating (even though sometimes I knew about it, because of my own background) and very readable. She writes with a certain distance about her life, if you agree she writes about her life at all, and I realised it worked for me. The last chapter, the most personal one, left me with moist eyes (I will not spoil anything, but will tell you "moisture" is generally thought to be an "ugly word").
A beautiful book about growing up and growing old with language
I received an eARC from NetGalley in return for my honest opinion.
That is, until she walks into a Linguistics class and sees a world opened up. There's science behind language. She now loves language, and the science of it.
We share a passion for language. Like her, part of my curriculum at University was Psycholinguistics. (and sociolinguistics, and several other classes, so there's more differences than overlap there) I cannot judge other readers' love for language, but Sedivy's is clear from the page. If you pick up this book thinking this is your next memoir, you are wrong. She tells us how she acquired languages (moving from one country to the other) how it felt to be lacking in the dominant language, and what people conclude from that fact. She lets you know there's love, and a divorce, but these chapters too are all written focusing on the language used, explaining how users of language add meaning to words, and deduct meaning from sentences and as a reader you are no closer to knowing the details of her marriage falling apart (and yet, it's there, she wrote it, even why it did).
Sedivy reaches meno-pause in her memoir, and grasps with words sometimes failing her.
Again, her book talks about her life in a few sentences, and paints it in with lots and lots of research - I found it to be compelling, fascinating (even though sometimes I knew about it, because of my own background) and very readable. She writes with a certain distance about her life, if you agree she writes about her life at all, and I realised it worked for me. The last chapter, the most personal one, left me with moist eyes (I will not spoil anything, but will tell you "moisture" is generally thought to be an "ugly word").
A beautiful book about growing up and growing old with language
I received an eARC from NetGalley in return for my honest opinion.
October 31, 2024
I really love this. But this is not a quick read--you have to be in the right mood and surrounding to be able to immerse in its beauty. Word after word after word can either take you to literary dreamscape or surfeit, so it took me some time to finish this, but even after a long break I always find something mind-blowing about language in particular that pushes me to rethink the way I view things. Because language is more than jumble of letters spoken or written within certain nationality; it is also miracle of birth, passage of time, and death. And the message often carries with me, like when I was riding my bicycle and suddenly I remembered a part in this book that talks about how language is propagation of our limbs, like vehicles.
The story is divided into three section, each has its own format/style as if demonstrating word manipulation that is discussed here--walk the talk, I see--and I really appreciate that. The blurb is right about it being part non-fiction part memoir, matching scientific theories with reality. If you are a multilingual speaker too like the author, you can relate to the struggle and privilege. As someone with English as their second/foreign language, when syntax, poetry structure, or any grammar related are explained, I needed a minute or two to digest the info, but the way Sedivy points them out brings me to recognize what's so special about it.
A must read for lovers of reading, speaking, and language.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing an ARC of this book.
The story is divided into three section, each has its own format/style as if demonstrating word manipulation that is discussed here--walk the talk, I see--and I really appreciate that. The blurb is right about it being part non-fiction part memoir, matching scientific theories with reality. If you are a multilingual speaker too like the author, you can relate to the struggle and privilege. As someone with English as their second/foreign language, when syntax, poetry structure, or any grammar related are explained, I needed a minute or two to digest the info, but the way Sedivy points them out brings me to recognize what's so special about it.
A must read for lovers of reading, speaking, and language.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing an ARC of this book.
October 29, 2024
Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.
Linguaphile is an interesting deep dive on linguistics and language acquisition, part memoir, part monograph, written by Dr. Julie Sedivy. Released 15th Oct 2024 by Macmillan on their Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprint, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
The author has an exquisite command of the language and the prose is often poetic and moving. She has a lot to say about language, how we acquire it, how we use it, and how it can enrich us and our interactions with one another.
It's not academically rigorous, in fact, it's perfectly accessible for average readers. It is, however, well annotated throughout and the references the author uses are mostly from academia and will require more effort to access and interpret.
This is one for nonfiction readers, and is exceptionally well written, moving, and often profound.
Four and a half stars. It would make an excellent acquisition for public or post-secondary school library, for home use, or possibly for a book club study.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Linguaphile is an interesting deep dive on linguistics and language acquisition, part memoir, part monograph, written by Dr. Julie Sedivy. Released 15th Oct 2024 by Macmillan on their Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprint, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
The author has an exquisite command of the language and the prose is often poetic and moving. She has a lot to say about language, how we acquire it, how we use it, and how it can enrich us and our interactions with one another.
It's not academically rigorous, in fact, it's perfectly accessible for average readers. It is, however, well annotated throughout and the references the author uses are mostly from academia and will require more effort to access and interpret.
This is one for nonfiction readers, and is exceptionally well written, moving, and often profound.
Four and a half stars. It would make an excellent acquisition for public or post-secondary school library, for home use, or possibly for a book club study.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
October 1, 2024
True to its premise of being part memoir, part scientific exploration, and part cultural commentary---Linguaphile celebrates and lingers on the immense power of language and the web it weaves between people and time. Sedivy dips in and out of her personal relationships with her family and herself, breaks down her fascination and holds us by the hand as she walks us through the intricacies of language. Indeed, languages have their own codes, secrets, and ways of interpreting and sharing meaning of the world. It bonds our minds and inner thoughts to the outer world. It grounds our minds and can help us prolong our claim on life and resist a little longer against death. A specific language evokes certain senses and feelings more strongly, colour memories differently, and may always be tied to a certain person in your mind. To deny its far-reaching effects, to put yourself down from mastering one, if not more, because of your age, are disservices to yourself. If one has any appreciation of languages, this book would appeal well to that interest.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an e-ARC/DRC in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an e-ARC/DRC in exchange for an honest review.
October 20, 2024
Part memoir and part observations on language, “Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love” is hard for me describe and review with much precision. “An odd little book” is what first comes to mind when I think of it. Author Julie Sedivy, and language scientist, offers quite a few excellent observations on how we learn language, the essence of it (things you’ve never thought about in that realm), and how it applies to our lives (again, some things you’ve never thought about). Intertwined with these insights are the author’s personal story, often with a tie to the discussion of language issues at hand, but sometimes not. So as a reader, I found it a bit uneven, difficult to follow at times. Too, I had difficulty fully understanding some of the author’s discussion on some elements of language and feel that a second reading of the book would be worthwhile to grasp more of that. I learned enough stuff, though, to give it 4 stars instead of 3.
June 5, 2024
3.5 ⭐
As a linguist, Julie Sedivy tries to understand how spoken language comprehension works.
As a child who grew up speaking four languages, she is well aware of the way language can shape a life and is linked with love and relationships. To communicate is to negotiate meanings; we cannot do this without merging our minds with each other.
"Linguaphile" is part memoir, part essay. It takes us through research findings on how we learn to speak and how we use language to connect. Do not worry though—you do not need an academic background to keep up with it. And if you wish to read further on this topic, you can find an explanatory reading list at the end of the book!
However, at its heart, this is also a tender and emotional tribute to the people and connections that shaped Sedivy into the person she is today.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC!
As a linguist, Julie Sedivy tries to understand how spoken language comprehension works.
As a child who grew up speaking four languages, she is well aware of the way language can shape a life and is linked with love and relationships. To communicate is to negotiate meanings; we cannot do this without merging our minds with each other.
"Linguaphile" is part memoir, part essay. It takes us through research findings on how we learn to speak and how we use language to connect. Do not worry though—you do not need an academic background to keep up with it. And if you wish to read further on this topic, you can find an explanatory reading list at the end of the book!
However, at its heart, this is also a tender and emotional tribute to the people and connections that shaped Sedivy into the person she is today.
Thanks to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC!
October 22, 2024
Thank you to the author, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Language and communication are essential building blocks to relationship, and having grown up with two languages - neither of which I can explain grammar for, but would consider myself fluent - and having learned three more, this seemed like a book that would be a perfect fit for me. Parts of it resonated deeply, e.g. the cultural commentary, but I did find that much of that material devolved quickly into broad generalizations. Some of the scientific evidence was fascinating, but some was very dry. The memoir was the largest part of the book, creeping into both of the other categories and shading them, which certainly made it more personal, but also tended to be more prejudicial. Overall, this was not quite what I expected, but it was an interesting read.
Language and communication are essential building blocks to relationship, and having grown up with two languages - neither of which I can explain grammar for, but would consider myself fluent - and having learned three more, this seemed like a book that would be a perfect fit for me. Parts of it resonated deeply, e.g. the cultural commentary, but I did find that much of that material devolved quickly into broad generalizations. Some of the scientific evidence was fascinating, but some was very dry. The memoir was the largest part of the book, creeping into both of the other categories and shading them, which certainly made it more personal, but also tended to be more prejudicial. Overall, this was not quite what I expected, but it was an interesting read.
October 6, 2024
I thought the way that Sedivy put together this book was unique and her love of words shone through. With parts written almost as a language love letter to her mother, Linguaphile captures the beauty of language and the concepts of how it draws us together, and sets us apart.
Between her methodical and chronological breakdown of her research, you can find many essays of her life and experience of how language guided her life from a very early age. Though I enjoyed reading about her personal experience, I really enjoyed the segments about her research on language and communication both of the animal and human kingdoms.
**Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sending this book for review. All opinions are my own.**
Between her methodical and chronological breakdown of her research, you can find many essays of her life and experience of how language guided her life from a very early age. Though I enjoyed reading about her personal experience, I really enjoyed the segments about her research on language and communication both of the animal and human kingdoms.
**Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sending this book for review. All opinions are my own.**
January 8, 2025
As Sedivy points out, language is about connecting people, so it's fitting that the memoir sections of Linguaphile are focused more on the relationships in her life than on specific events. She explores both the good and the bad in her connections with her parents, husbands, siblings, and friends, and in doing so, evokes the compelling complexity of human life. The titular love of language, as well, is apparent throughout the book; Sedivy explores both the science and the beauty of language in a way that celebrates both, and in a way that will make the reader pause to reflect on her own experiences of language and connection.
-Katharine Blatchford
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
-Katharine Blatchford
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
February 18, 2025
There is some beautiful, poetic writing here. I really enjoyed the discussion of how various languages overlap and coexist in the brain.
Author Dr Julie Sedivy clearly loves language, as I do. She would be a very interesting person to meet, but I found the book uneven in its ability to hold my interest.
The writing is sometimes so poetic that it felt variously vague, cloying or jarring, but that's just my personal reaction.
I reluctantly plowed through the section on her divorce and emerged with no insight as to what actually happened. Nor did I particularly care to know, in a book mostly about language. Sedivy's style is colourful but at times very vague.
Author Dr Julie Sedivy clearly loves language, as I do. She would be a very interesting person to meet, but I found the book uneven in its ability to hold my interest.
The writing is sometimes so poetic that it felt variously vague, cloying or jarring, but that's just my personal reaction.
I reluctantly plowed through the section on her divorce and emerged with no insight as to what actually happened. Nor did I particularly care to know, in a book mostly about language. Sedivy's style is colourful but at times very vague.
April 5, 2025
The author spoke five languages by the age of 5, so the language-learning period had some overlap with the memory period. It ought to interest me, but I couldn't let go of my skepticism.
She's not just describing experiences but stating things as facts. She attributes to infants awareness, intentionality, context, that I can't quite believe in. On the couple of occasions where I turned to the notes to see what the evidence was for some assertion, it turned out to be one paper; I don't have the expertise to assess a scholarly publication, but I don't think just one is enough. By page 35 I realized the book had lost enough of my trust that I was scrutinizing instead of reading.
She's not just describing experiences but stating things as facts. She attributes to infants awareness, intentionality, context, that I can't quite believe in. On the couple of occasions where I turned to the notes to see what the evidence was for some assertion, it turned out to be one paper; I don't have the expertise to assess a scholarly publication, but I don't think just one is enough. By page 35 I realized the book had lost enough of my trust that I was scrutinizing instead of reading.
May 20, 2025
Cool book, but maybe a tiny bit uneven. Certainly it’s a mixture: partly an introduction to some linguistics concepts, especially about her specialty, psycholinguistics. But also partly memoir, and also partly essays about life.
I liked the linguistics stuff a lot, and I wished there’d been more of that. I also enjoyed the memoir parts, especially the many cases where she could illustrate points about linguistics using her own childhood experiences. The essays were maybe a little more of a mixed bag - some of those parts were moving and well-written, but maybe not all of it.
But overall, a fine interesting book, I’d recommend it.
I liked the linguistics stuff a lot, and I wished there’d been more of that. I also enjoyed the memoir parts, especially the many cases where she could illustrate points about linguistics using her own childhood experiences. The essays were maybe a little more of a mixed bag - some of those parts were moving and well-written, but maybe not all of it.
But overall, a fine interesting book, I’d recommend it.
November 11, 2025
This is a collection of essays not just about loving language but about how it defines us. I've always been fascinated that almost everyone has some facility with language even though it's so unique and complicated. I've studied foreign languages and spent time in places where they speak many languages and I've worked with fantastic special needs kids from kindergarten to high school level, and it just feels like everyone is brilliant.
Sedivy explores different aspects of that, concluding with the story of her brother who lost language as he was dying. This feels more philosophical overall but it's interesting and made me think about my personal relationship with language.
Sedivy explores different aspects of that, concluding with the story of her brother who lost language as he was dying. This feels more philosophical overall but it's interesting and made me think about my personal relationship with language.
February 9, 2025
(Actual rating: 4.5 stars)
This book is not for everyone but it worked so incredibly well for me. The whole narrative, all 300+ pages of it, was a delicious series of intricately deep vocabulary and syntax. Linguistics and wordplay have long fascinated me and often infected my own vernacular, much to my sister's chagrin when we were young. This book reads not as a straight memoir but rather a collection of reflections on linguistically related topics organized around the birth to death cycle. I really enjoyed this and could easily see and almost feel the passion the author has for words.
This book is not for everyone but it worked so incredibly well for me. The whole narrative, all 300+ pages of it, was a delicious series of intricately deep vocabulary and syntax. Linguistics and wordplay have long fascinated me and often infected my own vernacular, much to my sister's chagrin when we were young. This book reads not as a straight memoir but rather a collection of reflections on linguistically related topics organized around the birth to death cycle. I really enjoyed this and could easily see and almost feel the passion the author has for words.
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