The Materiality of Language

"Shows how language politics and gender politics are related and how the two together explain why, by keeping women out of the scholastic community, men also exiled those aspects of language most associated with women. . . . Language in the university has been treated in different ways . . . but never for what it really is—a giving and taking between people. Bleich honors the tradition of thinkers who treat language materially. . . . I know of no other book that explains and defends materiality of language in such a wide ranging way. For anyone grappling with the idea of materiality, this book is an indispensable place to start. . . . It is a critique (historical and intellectual) of male-dominated modes of language use, their roots in the founding and administering of the university, their effects on what can and can't be studied, and their spill over into popular culture. . . . This critique roams broadly over science, social science, [and the] humanities, and both the critique and the alternative are powerfully rendered. Bleich offers a theory and a set of terms that can challenge prevailing paradigms."

~Deborah Brandt, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"A powerful, first-rate book on a crucial topic. It offers a great interpretation of the sacralization and ascendancy of Latin as a language supporting what Bleich calls 'an elite group of men.'. . . This is a brilliant codebook to academic language and its coercions."

~Dale Bauer, University of Illinois

"A critique of male-dominated modes of language use, their roots in the founding and administering of the university, their effects on what can and can't be studied, and their spill over into popular culture. . . . This critique roams broadly over science, social science, [and the] humanities, and both the critique and the alternative are powerfully rendered."

~Deborah Brandt, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Powerful, engaging, beautifully written, a slam-dunk of an argument for the materiality of language. As erudite as it is, it's also accessible and even funny."

~Tom Fox, California State University at Chico

"A potentially foundational text in an emergent field [of] language studies, whose work is to break up the monopoly Linguistics and Philosophy have had on the study of language. . . . The insight that the affective operation of language is elided in nearly all approaches to [language] acquisition is brilliant and astounding. . . . The analysis of subject creation as an affective process of recognizing and sharing the same affective state and language as the means for materializing affective states . . . is fascinating and persuasive. . . . One of the book's distinctive features is the use of gender as a key normative analytical lens throughout. It would be difficult to exaggerate how rare this is among language thinkers, and how productive it is for the arguments here."

~Mary Louise Pratt, New York University

"In provocative and compelling fashion, David Bleich writes of matters fundamentally important to composition and rhetoric. Bleich eloquently links crucial issues of language with their implications for our students and the ways we choose to teach them. Throughout this lucid and important work, Bleich encourages us to return to the importance of language and its centrality to authority and access."

~Deborah H. Holdstein, Columbia College Chicago

"The scope and depth of Bleich's work in The Materiality of Language are impressive. This book offers intriguing views of historical developments in language philosophies, the ways in which rigid views of language have supported institutional hegemony and androcentrism, and the positive implications of acknowledging language's materiality. The systematic links he draws among language, gender, institutions, and politics offer generative insights that will certainly be of interest to scholars in rhetoric and composition."

~Rhetoric Review

"[The author's] thesis is interesting and provocative. He argues forcefully for the relevance of language, construed as a material entity, across a wide range of disciplines (and to life in general), and challenges the focus on treating language as a cognitive phenomenon and studying it in abstract terms.11/7/13"

~New Books in Language