Batter Dip the Cranny Axe in the Gut Locker
Salon has published an excerpt from The Vulgar Tongue: Green’s History of Slang by lexicographer Jonathon Green. While ancient sex slang is sure to elicit a few giggles, Green also explores…
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linguistics
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You Are What You Review On Yelp
In an excerpt from his upcoming book, linguist Dan Jurafsky analyzes the metaphors we use to describe different kinds of food. Turns out humans are pretty optimistic: The Pollyanna effect…
Sharing Our Words
Writers often overuse a few unique words, creating a linguistic fingerprint. Vocabulary words are also exchanged between social groups. Some people contribute new words, while others adopt them. The process…
Creating New Words
The act of creating new words helps make language more precise. George Orwell once proposed a ministry responsible for inventing new words for precisely that reason, explains The Airship Daily.…
Tripping on Pronouns
Even if you know what is a pronoun and what “gender” means, you’ll want to read this linguistic time-tripping essay on the link that ties the part of speech to…
Nabokov vs. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
“When Nabokov started translating [his English-language memoir] into Russian, he recalled a lot of things that he did not remember when he was writing it in English, and so in…
“Pop,” “Soda,” or “Heaven Bubbles”?
You’ve probably seen this regional-dialect quiz from the New York Times making the rounds on your social networks. You answer questions about your vocabulary and pronunciation, and it tries to determine…
“Because” Has New Meaning, Because Grammar
Like it or not, the meanings and uses of words are constantly shifting, because language. At the Atlantic, Megan Garber writes about how the word “because,” normally a subordinating conjunction, is…
On “Proper” English and Objective Legislation
It’s no secret that English is a constantly shifting, malleable, many-headed beast of a language, yet, much of the time, writers and speakers insist emphatically on obeying its many ostensibly…
The Language of American Politics
At The American Interest, David Green issues “A Call To Linguistic Disobedience.” In his essay, Green argues that some of the most basic linguistic techniques used to describe the state…
Happy Words Win
Headed by the University of Vermont’s Isabel Klouman, a team of researchers did a massive language study that revealed an optimistic tendency of the English language—there are more positive words…
A Scientific Pronoun Revelation
“Men and women use language differently because they negotiate their worlds differently. Across dozens and dozens of studies, women tend to talk more about other human beings. Men, on the…