Books like Origins of a Creole — picked by fans

An invaluable scholarly source for understanding the Atlantic slave system at its source. Among the book’s virtues are details of the cultures and politics in the area of European penetration and African slavery itself and the African participation in the European trade. This book should be recognized with the extensive literature on the Atlantic slave trade for its acknowledgment of the great range of African languages and cultures that ended up in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.

In this fascinating study, Chasteen examines the historical experiences that molded Latin American popular dance from an Atlantic perspective. It delves into the “deep” history of Latin American culture and analyzes the development of dancing culture in its socio-historical context. This is not only a well-researched, but also a well written and oftentimes funny book that is broadly accessible. It is a must-read for any new scholar interested in the field of Black performance culture. Although the focus is on Latin America, Chasteen’s study reveals connections that are also of great importance to understanding the historical development of Black dance culture in North America.

Sensbach combines impressive archival skills with sophisticated analyses of textual and visual evidence to reconstruct the extraordinary life of a formerly enslaved woman of African descent, whose interracial marriage and missionary calling took her from the Caribbean to Germany and West Africa.

Rebecca’s Revival is a methodological tour de force, working from fragmentary evidence to reveal the complexity of issues of slavery, religion, and identity in the transatlantic eighteenth-century world.

Refusing to over-simplify the certainty of the evidence or its implications, Sensbach’s frequent use of words like “may,” “might,” “if,” and “perhaps” reflects not the weakness of indecision but rather the strength of a historian who discriminates the known from the unknown, and more importantly, the possible from the probable.

This edited volume studies Black festive traditions in the Americas that are rooted in African interpretations of early-modern Iberian customs. It shows how, from the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved and free Africans in the Americas used Catholic brotherhoods as spaces for cultural and religious expression, social organization, and mutual aid. By demonstrating that the syncretic development of certain Black performance traditions in the Americas is a phenomenon that already set in on African soil, it breaks with previous scholarship that (mis)interpreted these festive traditions in the Americas as new, Creole syncretisms. I am convinced that this pioneering book will strongly affect the way future generations of scholars will come to understand Black cultural and religious identity formation in the Americas.

Any book on language by John McWhorter is worth reading, but this particular one has become my new favorite! 

I found it absolutely unputdownable and, at times, hilarious. McWhorter takes a very refreshing and entertaining approach to language evolution by uncovering the hidden, constantly changing history of words, grammar, and sounds.

I was especially awed by McWhorter’s choices of fun examples, well explained. Most impressive, however, is how effortlessly he explains complex concepts like semantic drift and vowel shifts, making them perfectly clear to readers with absolutely no background in linguistics.

I was fascinated to see an anthropological linguist turn her analytic lens on her own culture (and mine), that of White America. What she finds is a fascinating pattern of ways that White Americans talk about race.

The observations she makes will change the way you see conversations around you. I found myself first saying, “No, surely that doesn’t happen,” but then noticing that very thing happening again and again.

Some of the best language stories lie dissected in the work of social scientists. Not an easy read. But once in a while, someone brings it to life, enjoyably. 

One such is John Edwards, whose ‘Multilingualism’ is required reading for my course on language and politics. Most countries are host to several languages – often a source (or a product) of ethnic pride, and why not? Sometimes, however, full-scale political and economic interventions may occur. And then, a language conflict is on the cards.

Nationalism often enflames such situations but sometimes wisdom and fortune prevail. Not long ago, Catalan and Quebecois French faced a bleak future, but have now seen political and cultural rejuvenation. But other vectors can change the story: Take the Southern Irish: The occupation over, they saw little cultural or economic value in Gaelic, which is now severely endangered.

After football and music, my first love was languages. From an early age I became fascinated with how language works and how significant it is in shaping social life and interpersonal relationships.

That fascination still remains, but what I find particularly interesting (and significant) is the relationship between language and social justice. Unfortunately, this has been hijacked by the simplistic ‘political correctness’ approach that seeks to simply ban certain words. The reality is far more complex and nuanced than this, and so a much more sophisticated approach is needed.

That’s where this excellent book comes in. It provides a very helpful analysis of how language and society interact in a variety of ways. 

For more than half a century, the science and philosophy of language have been dominated by Noam Chomsky, who holds that language depends on an innate, uniquely human capacity to generate complex structures. In this view, language is an aspect of thought, and communication is of little interest or relevance. In his own words, Daniel Dor “turns Chomsky on his head,” so that communication itself becomes the focus. Language is a means of expression, collectively invented by our ancient forebears, to go where the senses do not go—into our minds. This book should help transform our understanding of language as a practical technology rather than a biological oddity.

This remarkably clear and engaging read opened my eyes to the identity dimension of style. Using plenty of examples, it shows how we pick and mix from the many alternative ways we can say something to present and position ourselves in society in a specific way. 

Nikolas Coupland, currently Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University, thoroughly reviews previous sociolinguistic studies on style, from traditional to modern, steering research towards a more sophisticated and wide-ranging understanding of the ways specific contexts, local interactions, personal access to the resources of language and individual aesthetic choices make meaning in the presentation of the self.