I’ve taken a lot of foreign language classes in my life. At different times, I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese. The teachers that I encountered in these classes, not to mention many of my colleagues now, frequently talk about the value…
Recently, public figures like Sheryl Sandberg and Ariana Huffington have been calling attention to the labeling of young girls’ behaviors and particularly how the labels are often differently applied to young girls but not young boys. In particular the word bossy…
In the field of linguistics, we tend to make a distinction between two ways of thinking about language and grammar: prescriptivism and descriptivism.
In a couple of previous posts, I talked about how powerful people’s pet peeves about others’ language were being used to justify prejudices. As I pointed out, some educators and some business leaders are utilizing arbitrary ideas about language to draw unwarranted…
In my recent posts I’ve been exploring the choices in language use (or discourse) that CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC made when reporting on the recent fiscal cliff negotiations. I said that patterns of choices that different writers or groups…
linguistic pulse 