Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Talia Sherman ’26 is an undergraduate student concentrating in English and Linguistics. Her thesis project, tentatively titled “The Work of Language: Political, Productive, and Paradoxical Operations,” sits in the tension between how language works and the work of language. Centering theory and a diverse range of literary texts, but bringing together insights and material from anthropology, political theory, and (socio)linguistics, her project attempts to identify the political work of both language and its study. In theory and literature, language variously figures as a political weapon, a productive instrument, or the (metaphorical) mechanism of violence and failure. In linguistics, however, language is just another natural object: innocent because it is systematic and biologically endowed. By critically examining the work of scholarly perception and production, Sherman’s thesis problematizes the purported innocence of scientific inquiry, and unearths the heterogeneity of language when construed as a semiotic narrative device. An avid believer in the meritorious power of interdisciplinary scholarship, she hosts a podcast on linguistics and language. Outside of classes, she conducts research on sociolinguistics and development economics.