{"id":19931,"date":"2023-04-28T19:06:53","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T19:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=19931"},"modified":"2026-01-19T00:34:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T00:34:33","slug":"shelf-conscious-professor-christina-esposito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/04\/shelf-conscious-professor-christina-esposito\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelf Conscious: Professor Christina Esposito"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Kane ’26<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Christina Esposito is chair of the Linguistics Department. She studies and teaches phonetics.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any standout books you\u2019ve read recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a nine-year-old son, so a lot of my reading right now is guided by books that we pick together and that interest us both. Right now, we are reading The Girl Who Drank the Moon<\/em> by Kelly Barnhill. It\u2019s a book about an evil witch, and as the story progresses, it turns the traditional fairy tale story on its head. The book deals with themes of good versus evil, censorship, and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has reading with your son been enlightening for your literary taste?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve gone to the library and checked out a picture book since I was a child myself. I had spent all these years only reading novels. When I had my son, I was reintroduced to the world of children\u2019s literature and there are some really beautiful, interesting, and amazing children\u2019s books. If anything, the thing that I learned the most is that regardless of our age, we should go and check out any and all books, whether written for kids or adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s one of your all-time favorite reads?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I revisit J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings <\/em>frequently. Tolkien was a philologist, which is very similar to being a linguist, and he studied the historical aspects of language. As a linguist, I find his books interesting and fun to read because they\u2019re full of linguistic concepts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What book is crucial to understanding your academic niche?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book that\u2019s most easily accessible to people outside of the field of phonetics is Sounds Interesting<\/em> by John Wells. He talks about how people pronounce words differently, like \u201ccaramel\u201d and \u201cpajamas.\u201d In one of my classes, I give an assignment based on Sounds Interesting<\/em> in which students read some of Wells\u2019 thoughts and then think about a word they have puzzled over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is something you love to read that we might not expect?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I go home, I like reading cookbooks and craft books.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder about all those books lining professors\u2019 offices? We\u2019re with you.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":20031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,45],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-19931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","tag-linguistics","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30231,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19931\/revisions\/30231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}