Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language, was a study of the Prague School principle of structural asymmetry as developed by Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson.

The Story of Sherwin Cody’s Famous Language School, published in 2009, combined a biography of correspondence school entrepreneur Sherwin Cody with an exploration of language and cultural attitudes that made self-improvement and correspondence learning educational forces in the first half of the twentieth century.

In addition, Professor Battistella is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on pronoun reference, the syntax of the English verb system, traditional grammar and style.

[12] In 1986, he served as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union, in a Federal Court case in which a trucker challenged an Alabama state statute prohibiting the public display of "any bumper sticker, sign or writing which depicts obscene language descriptive of sexual or excretory activities".

[15] He has contributed entries on Damon Knight, Kim Novak, Les Schwab, Lenn Hannon, and Albert Kitzhaber, among others.