An approachable yet impressively rigorous study of various forms of language.
Finnegan, an academic linguist, argues for a more expansive interpretation of communication.
Proponents of the dominant theories of human discourse, the author observes, tend to see its development as a “one-way ladder” that ascends from primitive to increasingly more sophisticated forms, culminating in speech. This interpretative approach, often “logocentric” (focused on words as communication) and “unidimensional,” overly privileges Western civilization as a paradigm of communication, but it also neglects the full richness of communication, which the author defines as the “purposive, organised and mutually recognisable process in which individuals actively interconnect with each other.” This more inclusive understanding not only focuses on verbal speech, or on the conveyance of information, but also on interconnection provided by all the senses. Communication thus may be emancipated from verbal text, she asserts. Finnegan then explores, with great subtlety and insight, the multifarious expressions of communication in dance and rituals—to name only two of the communication methods she discusses. The author also discusses what she admits is the “deeply contentious area” of paranormal encounters and extrasensory communication. Throughout, Finnegan doesn’t treat communicative modalities as distinct from the social conditions from which they arise; instead, she shows how they’re mediated by cultural context. Ultimately, her view of communication is so convincingly broad that she’s able to emphasize the “human-animal continuity,” in which other species connect in remarkably complex ways, and how this idea can be used to illuminate human means of interconnection. The author aims for a popularly accessible study that avoids an overly granular survey of the academic literature; the result is an engaging, straightforward work likely to appeal to the curious nonprofessional—one that’s free of turgid jargon, but still intellectually exacting. Finnegan doesn’t ignore the more traditional elements of communication, nor does she neglect to acknowledge the “predominantly audiovisual” orientation of humans. She offers a challenging counterpoint to theories that reduce such communication to their cognitive or evolutionary parts, instead sketching a theory of far greater depth.
An approachable yet impressively rigorous study of various forms of language.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781032490397
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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