Edwin Battistella (born 1955) is an American linguist known for work on
markedness
In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
, syntax, and language attitudes. He is an emeritus professor of Humanities and Culture at
Southern Oregon University
Southern Oregon University (SOU) is a public university in Ashland, Oregon. It was founded in 1872 as the Ashland Academy, has been in its current location since 1926, and was known by nine other names before assuming its current name in 1997.Kre ...
in
Ashland, Oregon
Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States. It lies along Interstate 5 approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of the California border and near the south end of the Rogue Valley. The city's population was 21,360 at the 2020 ...
.
Background
Battistella studied Slavic languages and literatures at Rutgers College, completing a BA in 1976, and
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
at the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center, receiving a Ph.D. in 1981. His dissertation, ''Topics in the Theory of Inflection'', written under the direction of Robert Fiengo, developed the early theory of abstract case introduced in Noam Chomsky’s 1980 article "On Case Theory". The dissertation proposed that many instances of grammatical agreement could be treated as the assignment of abstract case features from clauses to the categories they contained, making a distinction between inherent and assigned case features.
Scholarly contributions
Battistella is the author of two books on the theory of
markedness
In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
. ''Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language'', was a study of the Prague School principle of structural asymmetry as developed by Nikolai Trubetzkoy and
Roman Jakobson
Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Sherwin Cody with an exploration of language and cultural attitudes that made self-improvement and correspondence learning educational forces in the first half of the twentieth century.
A fifth book, his 2014 ''Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology'', analyzes the public apologies of politicians, entertainers, businessmen, and others, with the goal of showing how certain language creates sincere or insincere apologies. The work connects actual apologies with the broader social, ethical, and linguistic principles behind them. His 2020 book, ''Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump'', analyzes and categorizes over 500 political insults aimed at the forty-five U.S. presidents and how they responded. The work puts political insults in historical context, emphasize the importance of the First Amendment, and shows contemporary American politics to be part of a broader narrative.
In addition, Professor Battistella is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on pronoun reference, the syntax of the English verb system, traditional grammar and style.
Professional activities
Battistella has held teaching, administrative and research positions at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, the 1986 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, the IBM
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...
, and
Wayne State College
Wayne State College is a public college in Wayne, Nebraska. It is part of the Nebraska State College System and enrolls 4,202 students. The college opened as a public normal school in 1910 after the state purchased the private Nebraska Normal Co ...
in Nebraska. He has been at Southern Oregon University since 2000, serving as Dean of Arts and Letters from 2000 to 2006 and as Interim Provost from 2007 to 2008.
From 1995 to 2001, Battistella served as the first book review editor for ''Language'', the journal of the
Linguistic Society of America
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...
. In 2014, he began a three-year term on the Society's Executive Committee.
In 2006 he became the editor of Wiley-Blackwell’s ''Linguistic Abstracts'', succeeding D. Terence Langendoen, and he and Rochelle Lieber became the founding editors-in-chief of Wiley-Blackwell's peer-reviewed online journal '' Language and Linguistics Compass''.
In 1986, he served as an expert witness for the
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
, in a Federal Court case in which a trucker challenged an Alabama state statute prohibiting the public display of "any bumper sticker, sign or writing which depicts obscene language descriptive of sexual or excretory activities".
From 2009 to 2015 Battistella served on the board of directors of Oregon Humanities, a state affiliate of the
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
. He is also a member of the editorial board of
The Oregon Encyclopedia
The ''Oregon Encyclopedia of History and Culture'' is a collaborative encyclopedia focused on the history and culture of the U.S. state of Oregon.
Description
The encyclopedia is a project of Portland State University's History Department, thOreg ...
, a peer-reviewed online state-encyclopedia established during Oregon’s sesquicentennial.
He has contributed entries on
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He is the author of " To Serve Man", a 1950 short story adapted for ''The Twilight Zone''.Stanyard, ''Dimensions Behind t ...
,
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter.
Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
, Les Schwab, Lenn Hannon, and Albert Kitzhaber, among others.
Books
*Battistella, Edwin. ''Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump.'' Oxford University Press, 2020.
*Battistella, Edwin. ''Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology.'' Oxford University Press, 2014.
*Battistella, Edwin. ''Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody’s Famous Language School.'' Oxford University Press, 2008.
*Battistella, Edwin. ''Bad Language: Are Some words Better Than Others?'' Oxford University Press, 2005.
*Battistella, Edwin. ''The Logic of Markedness''. Oxford University Press, 1996.
*Battistella, Edwin. ''Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language''. State University of New York Press, 1990.