Going Nucular
Oct. 7th, 2008 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI recently finished reading Geoffrey Nunberg's Going Nucular. Nunberg is a regular at Language Log; the book is a collection of short essays on "language, politics, and culture in confrontational times", as the subtitle puts it. Some of them are rather dry, but many raise unexpected insights and some of them sparkle.
The general topic is not words themselves, but the ways in which they are used, and the way these change. The change in the connotations of the word "plastic"; the misunderstandings between the West and the Islamic world over the meanings of the words "crusade" and "jihad"; the curious inversion whereby it became possible to speak of a "pro-government protest"; the peculiar freight belonging to the word "Gallic"; these are among the things Nunberg discusses. He talks about the connotations of the word "face" (as in "save" or "lose"); about the words we use in discussing matters of race; and about the words "liberal" and "leftist", and the strange relationship between them in USAn political discourse. He points out the fact that the phrase "on the up and up" has two different meanings, and that most people use it with one and are completely unaware of the other. He complains about those who complain about language (and, so often, know next to nothing about the subject) - and then complains about language himself, though with a gently self-mocking tone. He discusses the disappearance of line drawings and photographs from dictionaries (and oh, I do remember the glorious prints in my family's old two(massive)volume dictionary!), and drily comments (of the word "lucubration") that "[w]hen William F. Buckley, Norman Mailer, and the editors of the New York Review of Books have all lost their grip on the meaning of a word, maybe we should think about putting it out to pasture". He defends the word "ain't", sketches the nature and origins of the pronunciation "nucular", and complains about songs whose titles are adverbs in "-ly", and generally has a grand time of things.
A good book; not all that weighty, in the sum of things, but a fun read for lovers of words.
The general topic is not words themselves, but the ways in which they are used, and the way these change. The change in the connotations of the word "plastic"; the misunderstandings between the West and the Islamic world over the meanings of the words "crusade" and "jihad"; the curious inversion whereby it became possible to speak of a "pro-government protest"; the peculiar freight belonging to the word "Gallic"; these are among the things Nunberg discusses. He talks about the connotations of the word "face" (as in "save" or "lose"); about the words we use in discussing matters of race; and about the words "liberal" and "leftist", and the strange relationship between them in USAn political discourse. He points out the fact that the phrase "on the up and up" has two different meanings, and that most people use it with one and are completely unaware of the other. He complains about those who complain about language (and, so often, know next to nothing about the subject) - and then complains about language himself, though with a gently self-mocking tone. He discusses the disappearance of line drawings and photographs from dictionaries (and oh, I do remember the glorious prints in my family's old two(massive)volume dictionary!), and drily comments (of the word "lucubration") that "[w]hen William F. Buckley, Norman Mailer, and the editors of the New York Review of Books have all lost their grip on the meaning of a word, maybe we should think about putting it out to pasture". He defends the word "ain't", sketches the nature and origins of the pronunciation "nucular", and complains about songs whose titles are adverbs in "-ly", and generally has a grand time of things.
A good book; not all that weighty, in the sum of things, but a fun read for lovers of words.
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Subtitled: "language, politics, and culture in confrontational times"
Date: 2008-10-09 10:04 pm (UTC)I do hope that he's more Lewisian (Studies in Words) and isn't doing for language what Mr. Zinn did for history...
Re: Subtitled: "language, politics, and culture in confrontational times"
Date: 2008-10-09 11:58 pm (UTC)Re: Subtitled: "language, politics, and culture in confrontational times"
Date: 2008-10-09 11:59 pm (UTC)Re: Subtitled: "language, politics, and culture in confrontational times"
Date: 2008-10-12 01:11 am (UTC)Thank you! I look forward to the book!