Here are 100 books that Saussure For Beginners fans have personally recommended if you like
Saussure For Beginners.
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I have been passionate about animals all my life. I was raised on and currently help operate the family farm near Petersburg, Tennessee. I have a doctorate in animal science and joined Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) as a Professor of Animal Science and Department Chair on August 1, 2007, after retiring from a 25-year career with the Extension Service (University of Tennessee and University of Kentucky). I enjoy participating in community activities such as the Petersburg Community Cultural Coalition, Petersburg Lion’s Club, and serving as President of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Retiree’s Association. I have written two books, Cane Creek Days and Princess of Horses.
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.
“Inspiring…Crammed with facts and anecdotes about Temple Grandin’s favorite subject: the senses, brains, emotions, and amazing talents of animals.”—New York Times Book Review
A groundbreaking look at the emotional lives of animals, from beloved animal scientist Temple Grandin.
Why would a cow lick a tractor? Why are collies getting dumber? Why do dolphins sometimes kill for fun? How can a parrot learn to spell? How did wolves teach man to evolve? Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals…
I have always been fascinated by human behaviour since going to a school where we were told there was a right and a wrong way to do everything. That never felt right to me – human beings are much bigger than that! I studied Counselling and Therapy at Norwich City College in the 1990s and later specific courses on Transactional Analysis. Many years on, I am still learning…
This is the classic book on "mind-games" by the great Eric Berne. This really opened up a window to me on how people manipulate others – and how I had done this to other people, too.
Although its tone is a bit dated and can be irritating, the material remains as relevant and insightful as ever.
What qualifies me to compile this list of books, probably goes back to my childhood and the confusion I felt about human society and its conflict in word usage, compared to actual meaning. This fascination with psychology and linguistics, culminated in me reading perhaps hundreds of books, some of which are included here. My mother described me as a quiet baby and a child who would only say something, if they thought it was important, possible indicators of autism and the little professor syndrome of silent observation and study.
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…
Oliver Sacks has been described (by "The New York Times Book Review") as "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century," and his books, including the medical classics Migraine and Awakenings, have been widely praised by critics from W. H. Auden to Harold Pinter to Doris Lessing. In his last book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", Dr. Sacks undertook a fascinating journey into the world of the neurologically impaired, an exploration that Noel Perrin in the "Chicago Sun-Times" called "wise, compassionate, and very literate...the kind that restore(s) one's faith in humanity."Now, with "Seeing Voices",…
What qualifies me to compile this list of books, probably goes back to my childhood and the confusion I felt about human society and its conflict in word usage, compared to actual meaning. This fascination with psychology and linguistics, culminated in me reading perhaps hundreds of books, some of which are included here. My mother described me as a quiet baby and a child who would only say something, if they thought it was important, possible indicators of autism and the little professor syndrome of silent observation and study.
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.
'ONE OF THOSE RARE BOOKS I HADN'T REASLISED I'D BEEN WAITING FOR UNTIL I READ IT.' Owen Sheers
'OPEN-MINDED, THOUGHTFUL AND WISE... A LIBERATING BOOK' Colm Toibin
In an age of polished TED talks and overconfident political oratory, success seems to depend upon charismatic public speaking. But what if hyper-fluency is not only unachievable but undesirable?
Jonty Claypole spent fifteen years of his life in and out of extreme speech therapy. From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the…
I’ve always been fascinated by the power of language to propel everything we think—from our values and beliefs, to political views, to what we take for absolute truth. Once I learned there’s a whole field devoted to studying language called “rhetoric”—the field in which I’m now an expert—there was no turning back. Rhetoric has been around for more than 2,000 years, and since its inception, it has taught people to step back from language and appraise it with a more critical eye to identify how it works, why it’s persuasive, and what makes people prone to believe it. By studying rhetoric, we become less easily swayed and more comfortable with disagreement.
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 Cours de linguistique generale, reconstructed from students' notes after Saussure's death in 1913, founded modern linguistic theory by breaking the study of language free from a merely historical and comparativist approach. Saussure's new method, now known as Structuralism, has since been applied to such diverse areas as art, architecture, folklore, literary criticism, and philosophy.
My passion as a teacher and writer is to help students and others interpret, understand and enjoy architecture and the built environment, and to help them respond in their own designs to the complexities of place, people, and construction. I have chosen five well-established books on analysing architecture that are highly illustrated, avoid jargon, can be explored rather than needing to be read sequentially cover-to-cover, and have lasting value. They offer guidance for beginning students and a checklist for the experienced. They are books to be kept handy and repeatedly consulted. Of course, analysing existing architecture is invaluable in designing new architecture. I hope you enjoy them.
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.
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture,…
My mother called me a “television junkie.” In graduate school, where TV was not yet considered a worthwhile scholarly endeavor, I became enthralled by Twin Peaks and Roseanne. Rebelliously, I thought both had so much to say about gender studies and theories of postmodernism. Absent of an official curriculum, I started reading and writing about television history, medium specificity, genre theory and seriality. I got my PhD and published articles on film, TV, and my book. Since 1992, I have developed several television studies courses for our small media studies department: Crime Drama, Reality TV, Gender and Genre on Television, Transmedia Adaptations, and Media Rituals.
I love reading, rereading, and teaching with this book. Whenever I open it, I learn something new or remember crucial aspects that enhance my understanding of television as a medium, my enjoyment of specific shows or genres I watch, and find new ways of engaging with production, representation, and performance aspects.
I have now taught with it since his earlier 2011 volume (Critical Approaches) and am only sad that this one appears to be the final edition. It is chock-full of intriguing case studies and deft explanations of what makes television television.
For over two decades, Television has served as the foremost guide to television studies, offering readers an in-depth understanding of how television programs and commercials are made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience.
Highlights of the fifth edition include:
An entirely new chapter by Amanda D. Lotz on television in the contemporary digital media environment.
Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in screen culture during the on-demand era-including…
I am a Professor of English at the University of Sussex. I have worked on a wide range of subjects over the years, mainly about the English Renaissance. I have a long-standing interest in travel and colonial writing, the ways in which the English interacted with other peoples and other places, which started with my interest in Ireland where I studied and which was the subject of my early books. I have broadened my perspective as I have read more on the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia, over the years and am committed to uncovering the truth of the uncomfortable, challenging, and fascinating history of the early British Empire.
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.
In this engaging book, John Gillies explores Shakespeare's geographic imagination, and discovers an intimate relationship between Renaissance geography and theatre, arising from their shared dependence on the opposing impulses of taboo-laden closure and hubristic expansiveness. Dr Gillies shows that Shakespeare's images of the exotic, the 'barbarous, outlandish or strange', are grounded in concrete historical fact: to be marginalised was not just a matter of social status, but of belonging, quite literally, to the margins of contemporary maps. Through an examination of the icons and emblems of contemporary cartography, Dr Gillies challenges the map-makers' overt intentions, and the attitudes and assumptions…
I’m a law professor and the son of a very well-dressed man. My father was a university Dean, a community organizer, a Presbyterian minister, and a social worker. But he also trained as a tailor and knew clothing—both how it is (or should be) constructed and also how it communicates. I became interested in the importance of clothing because of his influence. Then, in law, I noticed a lot of disputes that involved clothing: high school dress codes, workplace dress codes, dress codes used on public transportation. I wanted bring these two together to give a better idea of why we still fight and struggle over clothing.
Written by the great French semiotician, this book applies the semiotic method to symbolism of fashion. People often say that fashion is like a language, but Barthes actually explains precisely how it symbolizes. He explains how fashion is a symbolic system that includes not only clothing itself, but also representations of clothing in text and image, fashion magazines, films, and other depictions that anchor the meaning of sartorial symbols.
In his consideration of the language of the fashion magazine--the structural analysis of descriptions of women's clothing by writers about fashion--Barthes gives us a brief history of semiology. At the same time, he identifies economics as the underlying reason for the luxuriant prose of the fashion magazine: "Calculating, industrial society is obliged to form consumers who don't calculate; if clothing's producers and consumers had the same consciousness, clothing would be bought (and produced) only at the very slow rate of its dilapidation."
Two self-interested people will try to outperform each other. One will win, the other will lose. If they instead cooperate, both will win a bit, and lose a bit. Is this preferable? I say yes, because in the long term, winning a bit many times, is better than winning a lot, once. Choosing short-term gain at the expense of long-term benefit is a waste of potential for societies and individuals. Traditional morality works, sometimes, in some cases. Rational morality can fill the gaps, and expand the circle of morality so that when higher ideals fail or become too difficult to follow, rationality can be about more than just short-term self-interest.
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.
Brian Skyrms presents a fascinating exploration of how fundamental signals are to our world. He uses a variety of tools - theories of signaling games, information, evolution, and learning - to investigate how meaning and communication develop. He shows how signaling games themselves evolve, and introduces a new model of learning with invention. The juxtaposition of atomic signals leads to complex signals, as the natural product of gradual process. Signals operate in networks of senders and receivers at all levels of life. Information is transmitted, but it is also processed in various ways. That is how we think - signals…
