Books like Saussure For Beginners — picked by fans

Dr. Grandin’s personal struggle with autism and her love of animals have combined to revolutionize our current understanding of animal behavior and human interactions with our animal partners.

Her body of work is not only impressive but has informed both my career as an animal scientist and my fiction. This book is exemplary of her profound impact on people who love animals.

I loved this book so much because I was blown away by the unconscious roles all of us tend to take on in life that don’t serve us–that lead to unnecessary drama and drained interactions. This book was funny, and I laughed out loud a lot at the roles/scenarios like “mailman” or “firefighter” because they were so simple in concept, and also I was so unaware that these behavior patterns existed–even in my own life–many of which I fell into if I wasn’t aware of how I was interacting and not taking responsibility for my communication. 

While the read is somewhat academic, Berne uses these “games” to highlight how drama can zap our energy or best intentions, and instead, we end up feeling inferior, superior, or like children even when we’re fully capable as adults.

If you are wondering how you keep getting into the same drama professionally or personally… show more.

Here we have another of Oliver Sacks' brilliant books, the subject this time being the deaf. My brother’s wife is profoundly deaf as is her brother (heredity disease). He had a cochlear implant but she refused one and knowing my brother I can’t blame her. To me the most fascinating part of the book is the development of sign language and how different forms appeared in different countries. The creation of deaf schools, like the one started by Alexander Graham Bell, whose parents were both profoundly deaf, caused controversy because he didn’t believe in sign language and tried to force his pupils to use only speech in communication. As they had no feedback for sound, this was unbelievably stupid in my opinion as you can only change what you sense and can make sense of. Those who sign can ‘speak’ rapidly and clearly by ‘visual’ means, whereas those who try… show more.

This book is a UK best seller. It deals with a variety of communication difficulties, including the author’s own stuttering. The only thing it doesn’t really cover is literacy, occasionally mentioning it, which is my only beef with it. Problems like aphasia caused by strokes, where words are forgotten or where words are slurred as in degenerative brain disease are well covered as are autism and Tourette's syndrome, which isn’t all swearing but includes tics. He also asks do we need to be hyper-fluent in speech as some people are and mentions ways people try to disguise their disability. He argues that such defects are genetic and that exercises like slowing down speech therefore can’t help but then mentions contrarily instances where they do, indicating the speed of delivery matters. He also fails to mention that self-censorship through fear of embarrassment, puts conscious blocks on communication.

Another classic. This book launched the intellectual movement known as structuralism, a theory that calls into question the idea of human autonomy and individual will. Even though I may feel like I am in conscious control of all my words, thoughts, and actions, structuralism says this is an illusion, especially where language is concerned. 

Saussure introduced the radical idea that “language eludes the control of our will.” The larger symbolic system of meaning predetermines what can be said and thought more than my individual intention does. That system developed slowly over time, and we never observed its long process of development, yet we are always constrained by it, like being caught in a web.

Saussure claims it’s not us but language that’s in charge; we’re just along for the ride. 

The first three books on my list concentrate on building form and space, with little about function.

The ‘pattern language’ is different, mapping human activities onto appropriate built forms, and advocating repeated patterns that have been found to work.

Christopher Alexander wants us to use the patterns in designing responses to situations, but they also help to judge how well-built spaces fit their contexts in analysing architecture.

Although Alexander maps activities onto his own preferred design style, the patterns are not inherently specific to any style or period of architecture.

Despite being written 50 years ago, this one-of-a-kind book is still fresh and relevant.

Brian Skyrms works on evolutionary game theory, among other things.

Signals is set in this context but focuses on the importance of information and communication for cooperation, and morality. We cannot cooperate, if we cannot communicate. And we cannot be moral, if we are not cooperative.

Thus, morality is born out of sociability, which is born out of communication. Like Sugden, Skyrms does not assume a moral character but ends up with a moral outcome.

An alternative understanding of Signals is focused on evolution. Signals, meaning and communication follow evolutionary dynamics, similarly to moral and social norms.

Understanding communication is vital to understand our social behavior, and it is especially topical today when communication takes many means and forms.

I spent much of the past few decades online, in different online communities that each have their own special way of communicating. With how fast the internet evolved, it should be no surprise that language rapidly changed with it.

In Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch takes the reader through a linguistic analysis of the internet, from leetspeak to doge memes. It’s already missing more recent internet language a few years after publication. Still, I love the book for a casual yet academic look at the silly side of the internet's teenage years. 

A careful, meticulous, and thoughtful analysis of the ways in which the opening up of the world for English audiences left its mark on the work of the most celebrated author of the period.

Gillies shows how Shakespeare thought about the key areas of the world, in passing as well as when writing directly about specific regions, notably, southern Europe, the Americas, the Mediterranean, France, Italy, and elsewhere.

When I first read this book (almost 40 years ago), it became the foundation for how I think about culture, creativity, and their connection to revolution.

Hebdige shows how little things like the cut of a pair of trousers or a hairstyle can make important social critiques that are understood and reverberate far beyond the youth subcultures that spawn them. And he provides a theoretical framework for thinking about possibilities for revolution in everyday life. Plus, it’s the most insightful book about punk ever written.