Welcome to Books of the Month, where once a month, L&S staff select works from our Bookshelf of authors within the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. This month, we’re focusing on the study of language; its structure, function, usage, history and changes.
In a world where speaking the same language doesn’t translate to actually understanding one another, the study of language, known as linguistics, is essential, complex and nuanced. These scholars help us understand the importance of the words we use, the dialects we speak and write in, and, ultimately, the ways in which we can understand one another better.
The English Language on Trial
By John A. Hawkins (Department of Linguistics)
Many lawsuits arise over disagreements about language and about the meanings of everyday words, phrases and sentences. The English Language on Trial: Witnessing Disputed Meanings in American Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Professor Jack Hawkins draws on more than 50 cases involving disputed meanings in the American legal system where the author served as an expert witness or consultant, to explore the interaction between language and law.
Nice White Anglophones
By Eric Louis Russell (Department of French and Italian)
Nice White Anglophones: Privilege, Power and Monolingualism (Routledge, 2026) by Professor Eric Louis Russell is an innovative work exploring race, power and ideology via an extended fictional case study centring on a monolingual white American family. The reader is invited to follow this seemingly “normal” white English-speaking family through their everyday life and think critically about their linguistic and cultural reality, what they do and, especially, what they do not do.
Fighting Words!
By Eric Louis Russell (Department of French and Italian)
Fighting Words! A Critical Approach to Linguistic Transgression (Taylor & Francis Group, 2024) looks at some linguistic dumpster fires — what Russell calls “acts of linguistic transgression,” or the ways people cross boundaries through language.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Linguistics
Edited by Ryan M. Nefdt, Gabe Dupre (Department of Philosophy), and Kate Hazel Stanton
With chapters on the foundations of syntax, metasemantics, phonology, computational linguistics, developmental linguistics and cognitive neurolinguistics, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Linguistics (Oxford University Press, 2026), co-edited by Assistant Professor Gabe Dupre, is a valuable resource for those interested in the origins of language, its formal underpinnings, its cognitive implementation and its social manifestations.
Psycholinguistics: A Very Short Introduction
By Fernanda Ferreira (Department of Psychology)
Psycholinguistics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Professor Fernanda Ferreira is an accessible and engaging description of how people use language. The book explores aspects such as how people adapt their phrasing to their audience, how sign language is processed, and whether bilingualism is cognitively advantageous. It considers how new developments and trends, such AI tools, highlights core questions about how humans comprehend, produce and learn language.
Social Network Analysis in Second Language Research
Edited by Robert Bayley (Department of Linguistics) and Kristen Kennedy Terry
Social Network Analysis in Second Language Research (Routledge, 2024), co-edited by Distinguished Professor Emeritus Robert Bayley, was the first holistic research overview and practical methodological guide for social network analysis in second language acquisition, examining how to study learner social networks and how to use network data to predict language learner behavior and identity.
Rhetoric, Poetics, and Literary Historiography
By Stefan H. Uhlig (Department of Comparative Literature)
In Rhetoric, Poetics, and Literary Historiography: The Formation of a Discipline at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Associate Professor Stefan H. Uhlig offers a new account of the emergence of literary studies. Uhlig draws on a variety of European writers to demonstrate how different schools of literary study — rhetoric teaching, theories of poetry and literary history — emerged and clashed in the decades around 1800. The text traces current debates in the field to this moment in history, giving context to these controversies.
Beyond Tordesillas
Edited by Robert Patrick Newcomb (Department of Spanish and Portuguese) and Richard A. Gordon
Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies (Ohio State University Press, 2017), co-edited by Professor Robert Patrick Newcomb, consolidates work being done on the connections between the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds on both sides of the Atlantic.
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