Tongue First

A smart, humorous exploration of bodily thrills and paranoia from aerobics to acupuncture, strip shows to sensory deprivation. Your perception of your body will change when you read this book. You will be pulling on your boxer shorts or your black lace bra, and suddenly consider why you decorate yourself the way you do. You will shake up your martini, kiss your beloved, read a dirty magazine, go for a jog, and think about what your bodily behavior says about your soul. And what it is doing to your soul. You will notice the defenses you erect for yourself. Perhaps a tube of lipstick. Perhaps an addiction. Testing the boundaries between fear and temptation, Emily Jenkins takes us on a journey from ordinary physical experiences (going to the dentist, putting on stockings) to extreme ones (snorting heroin, shaving her head). She interviews people whose bodies are radically different from hers and enters communities where people share unusual ideas about physicality. Sometimes you will recognize your own habits. Other times you'll be shocked or repulsed. Always you will find yourself questioning the ordinary things you do, rethinking your relationship to your body.

Of all the cultural "revolutions" brought about by the development of printing technology during the sixteenth century, perhaps the most remarkable but least understood is the purported rise of European vernacular languages. It is generally accepted that the invention of printing constitutes an event in the history of language that has profoundly shaped modernity, and yet the exact nature of this transformation—the mechanics of the event—has remained curiously unexamined. In The Prosthetic Tongue, Katie Chenoweth explores the relationship between printing and the vernacular as it took shape in sixteenth-century France and charts the technological reinvention of French across a range of domains, from typography, orthography, and grammar to politics, pedagogy, and poetics. Under François I, the king known in his own time as the "Father of Letters," both printing and vernacular language emerged as major cultural and political forces. Beginning in 1529, French underwent a remarkable transformation, as printers and writers began to reimagine their mother tongue as mechanically reproducible. The first accent marks appeared in French texts, the first French grammar books and dictionaries were published, phonetic spelling reforms were debated, modern Roman typefaces replaced gothic scripts, and French was codified as a legal idiom. This was, Chenoweth argues, a veritable "new media" moment, in which the print medium served as the underlying material apparatus and conceptual framework for a revolutionary reinvention of the vernacular. Rather than tell the story of the origin of the modern French language, however, she seeks to destabilize this very notion of "origin" by situating the cultural formation of French in a scene of media technology and reproducibility. No less than the paper book issuing from sixteenth-century printing presses, the modern French language is a product of the age of mechanical reproduction.

"It almost takes your breath away when you realize the tremendous power of the tongue. It can do things that are dastardly, destructive, degrading, and distressing. The tongue can lie. It can accuse. It can exaggerate. It can curse. It can deprave. It can slander. It can gossip. It's the match that lights the fire! But when the tongue is under Christ's control, it is mindboggling what it can do to the contrary. It can encourage. It can tell the truth. It can bless. It can speak love. It can bring hope! And the highest, most noble thing the tongue can do: it can praise Almighty God and proclaim redemption in Jesus Christ. This little body part that has the power to be so destructive when out of control, when under control has the power and the privilege of praising, adoring, exalting, and making known the living God"--Page 4 of cover

Of all the cultural "revolutions" brought about by the development of printing technology during the sixteenth century, perhaps the most remarkable but least understood is the purported rise of European vernacular languages. It is generally accepted that the invention of printing constitutes an event in the history of language that has profoundly shaped modernity, and yet the exact nature of this transformation—the mechanics of the event—has remained curiously unexamined. In The Prosthetic Tongue, Katie Chenoweth explores the relationship between printing and the vernacular as it took shape in sixteenth-century France and charts the technological reinvention of French across a range of domains, from typography, orthography, and grammar to politics, pedagogy, and poetics. Under François I, the king known in his own time as the "Father of Letters," both printing and vernacular language emerged as major cultural and political forces. Beginning in 1529, French underwent a remarkable transformation, as printers and writers began to reimagine their mother tongue as mechanically reproducible. The first accent marks appeared in French texts, the first French grammar books and dictionaries were published, phonetic spelling reforms were debated, modern Roman typefaces replaced gothic scripts, and French was codified as a legal idiom. This was, Chenoweth argues, a veritable "new media" moment, in which the print medium served as the underlying material apparatus and conceptual framework for a revolutionary reinvention of the vernacular. Rather than tell the story of the origin of the modern French language, however, she seeks to destabilize this very notion of "origin" by situating the cultural formation of French in a scene of media technology and reproducibility. No less than the paper book issuing from sixteenth-century printing presses, the modern French language is a product of the age of mechanical reproduction.

Your perception of your body will change when you read this book. You will be pulling on your jeans or your black lace bra, & suddenly consider why you decorate yourself the way you do. You will drink wine with your friends, kiss your beloved, read a dirty magazine, go for a jog, & think about what your bodily behaviour says about your soul. And what it is doing to your soul. You will notice the defences you erect for yourself. Perhaps a tube of lipstick. Perhaps a tattoo? Perhaps an addiction. Testing the boundaries between fear and temptation, Emily Jenkins takes us on a journey from ordinary physical experiences (going to the dentist, putting on stockings) to extreme ones (snorting heroin, head shaving). She interviews people whose bodies are radically different from hers & enters communities where people share unusual ideas about physicality. Sometimes you will recognise your own habits. Other times you'll be shocked or repulsed. Always you will find yourself questioning the ordinary things you do, rethinking your relationship to your body.