Eric Louis Russell

I am a linguist who is interested in people as linguistic and cultural beings. In my view, language and culture are inseparable, and neither of these can be understood apart from the humans who accomplish them.

I take a fairly iconoclastic stance when it comes to my work, whether this be teaching, research or writing. This begins with a question: What if we were to take the seemingly radical step of thinking of language differently - not as something that exists apart from us, a noun or entity that can do anything or that possesses certain features? What if we were to reimagine language as a verb - to riff from the late, great bell hooks and her take on love (who was inspired by the work of Scott Peck, who pulled from Erich Fromm...), language is an act of will, an intention and an action, a series of choices. Language is a doing, and a doing with other language-doers. If we accept this, we must also recognize that our action does much more than meets the eye. We are accomplishing power, living out ideology, manifesting identity, deploying our privilege... and pushing against others' privilege. Our language doings construct and reflect our worlds - the truths we hold and the realities that guide us. This "script flipping" not only upends the ways we often refer to language (namely, as anthropomorphized beings), it also returns language and linguistics to the humanities and to the realm of humans.

My research proceeds critically, which is another way of saying that I identify problem areas and seek to understand them from the inside, unraveling the structures and dynamics that lead languagers to take things for granted or consider them natural and inevitable. I've tackled questions of homophobia and Islamophobia, toxic masculinity and male hegemony, cisgenderism and sexism; I'm currently working on a project that engages with the privileged world of certain languager groups and the unseen work of others. Because I firmly believe that this type of work can not be done from a distance, I work emically ("from within"), applying my questions to Anglophone, Francophone, Italophone and Netherlandophone cultural spaces. 

To get a sense of my research and perspective, click here for a recent keynote given at the Università degli Studi di Trieste - Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici during the "Giornata sulle trasformazioni dell'umano".  Or check out this episode of the award-winning podcast Vocal Fries, done in the spring of 2024 with Kris Knisely. 

My teaching also departs from these bases. In addition to classes in French and Italian linguistics, I regularly offer a course examining very bad language - swearing, offensive jokes, slurs, and all manner of actions that make people (including myself!) cringe. I truly enjoy mentoring students interested in this type of work, and welcome the chance to work with everyone, from first-year undergrads to those writing their doctoral theses. I am also the faculty advisor for Italian majors and minors, a role that allows me to interact with students from different backgrounds and with varied goals. 

I also take part in a local master's swim team, enjoy photography, and just about anything involving informed exploring, cooking and wine.

Feel free to come by and chat about language, culture, where to swim or just about anything else!

Forthcoming & In Progress

Coming mid-2024, co-written with Chloe Brotherton: "Abjection and Subjection: The banality of sexual hegemony." Chapter in Critical Sexualities Studies (M. Marzullo & W. Leap, eds., Bloomsbury). 

In progress: Nice White Anglophones: Questions of monolingualism, privilege and power.  

Selected Publications

2024. Fighting Words! A critical approach to linguistic transgression (Routledge).

2024. Redoing Linguistic Worlds: Unmaking gender binarities, remaking gender pluralities, ed. with Kris Knisely. Multilingual Matters. 

2023. Linguistic Engagement as Public Health: Anti-genderism and critical language scholarship for the 21st century. Gender & Language, special issue (D. Baran & R. Borba, eds.). https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.25637 

2022. Hailing All Neoliberals: Corruption and the Trumpist Response to COVID-19. In Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era, D. Goldstein & K. Drybread (eds.). Routledge. 

2021. Alpha masculinity - Hegemony in language and discourse.  Palgrave Macmillan.

2020. Hate in Language, Hate and Language. In. K. Hall & R. Barett, Oxford Handbook of Language & Sexuality.

2020. "Dans la langue, il n'y a que des différences": New communications, new enquiries... New linguistics? Journal of Language & Sexuality 9.1: 93-95.

2019. The Discursive Ecology of Homophobia: Unraveling anti-LGBTQ language on the European Far Right. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

2019. ‘Les Hommen’: The language of reactionary masculinity. Gender & Language 13.1: 94-121.

Courses Regularly Taught

HUM 15, Language and Identity (aka "f*ck this sh*t"): In this class, students explore transgressive and taboo languaging and languagers. They gain critical analytical skills and practice looking at linguistic life from the perspective of an engaged, humanist-linguist. 

FRE 109, Phonetics and Phonology: In this class, students explore the ways that French is lived out in the articulatory world. They come to understand the differences between French and other languages, how French varies in different contexts, and what contributes to different accents.

ITA 128, Queer Italia: In this class, students explore the past and present of gender and sexual citizens in Italophone linguacultures. They investigate readings, film and social media pertinent to questions such as binarity/non-binarity in language, transgressive masculinity, and sexual hegemony. 

ITA 118, Dialects in Italy: In this class, students adopt their own dialect or regional language, exploring the ways this differs from standard Italian. In so doing, they obtain a solid foundation in the linguistic description of languagers and linguacultures.

FRE 201, Critical History of French: In this class, graduate students re-examine the historical emergence of French-as-Ideology, particularly the ways that this is demonstrative of power structures and hegemonic dynamics. They re-read the sociolinguistic history of the language through the lens of critical theorists, including Gramsci, Bourdieu and Foucault.