Nick Enfield
Nick Enfield is professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Social Science and Humanities Advanced Research Centre. He is a member of the University of Sydney’s Fighting Truth Decay research node. His research on language, culture, cognition and social life is based on long-term fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos.
Books by Nick Enfield
Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists
by Nick Enfield
In Language vs Reality Nick Enfield, a linguistics professor at the University of Sydney, brings into focus just how misleading language is when it comes to describing reality. Language has evolved as a tool for persuading others, not for conveying factual information as accurately as possible. The book is a nice insight into how we start spinning reality the moment we open our mouths, a call to be aware and to have respect for language's enormous power. Read more in our interview with Nick on Language and Post-Truth.
Interviews with Nick Enfield
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1
Language, Thought, and Reality
by Benjamin Lee Whorf -
2
The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality
by Karl Popper -
3
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch -
4
Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe
by Hugo Mercier -
5
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
by Julia Galef
The best books on Language and Post-Truth, recommended by Nick Enfield
The best books on Language and Post-Truth, recommended by Nick Enfield
The word ‘post-truth’ may only have entered the Oxford English Dictionary in the last decade, but the phenomenon it describes is much older and deeper, connected not so much to the latest internet trend as the fundamentals of human cognition and communication. Here, linguistic anthropologist Nick Enfield, a professor at the University of Sydney and a member of its fighting truth decay research node, introduces the best books to get thinking about the complex relationship between language and reality.
