Language Log

That's the bag-of-words summary of last night's vice-presidential debate.

This is a follow-up on a couple of my more recent LL posts on language and politics, and on the discussion that has been generated by one of them in particular. First, Main Street. Several commenters wrote that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not being "unnecessarily redundant" (as I put it) by referring to "Main […]

A few days ago, in discussing Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin ("The phonetics of flop sweat", 9/26/2008), I quoted the reaction "Those aren't talking points; they're babbling points". But in Couric's 9/29 interview with Governor Palin and Senator McCain together, things went differently, in a way that deserves notice.

My posting on Clark Hoyt's column on the NYT's practices in referring to people by name has elicited interesting commentary, some of which I'll talk about here. There were two sets of Times practices Hoyt discussed: the use of "courtesy titles" (that is, Title + LN [last name], in Mrs. Clinton or Senator Clinton, rather […]

The general reaction to Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric has been a sort of displaced embarrassment.  I thought that Timothy Burke expressed it well ("Trade Secret of Teachers", 9/25/2008): Bluffing at knowledge is kind of like a bad pick-up line in a bar: it may be amusing, it’s usually off-putting, and most importantly, it’s […]

Clark Hoyt's "Public Editor" column in the NYT on Sunday 14 September ("Getting Past the Formalities") responds to reader queries about Times practices in referring to people by name: (1) Why "Ms. Palin" but "Mrs. Clinton"? (2) Why "Barack Hussein Obama" three times on the front page on 28 August? Some readers saw dark political […]

A brief note on the intrusion of the word uppity into the U.S. presidential election. It came a while back, from congressman Lynn Westmoreland. Here's one (of a great many) reports on the event, from The Hill on 4 September: Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate […]

It isn't unusual for a political controversy to turn on the interpretation of what someone on one side said. Indeed, I discussed a couple of cases of this type the other day. What is peculiar about the most recent incident in the Presidential election is that the side whose exegesis is superior appears to have […]

The Presidential campaign of the past few days provides us with not one but two examples of false claims about candidates' statements. The first is the now widespread claim that Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin believes that the Iraq War is divinely ordained because she said that: our national leaders are sending them [the […]

Many commentators have observed that John McCain is campaigning as if it were the Democrats, not the Republicans, who had been in office for the last eight years, hoping that voters will forget about George Bush and view the Republicans as the party of reform. If only more people had a classical education, McCain's choice […]

Adding to the growing corpus of speech errors connected to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign,  we have Jo Ann Davidson, Co-Chairman of the Republican National Committee, at the Republican convention in St. Paul, 9/2/2008: We are holding a convention to ((el- )) nominate a Republican woman governor, Sarah Pawlenty, our next vice president!

Comedy Central is currently showcasing this "astoundingly popular" video clip from The Daily Show: Throughout the clip, Jon Stewart juxtaposes comments about [Alaska Governor and Republican V.P. nominee] Sarah Palin by [former Republican strategist] Karl Rove, [FoxNews blowhard] Bill O'Reilly, ["lying sack of shit"] Dick Morris, and [McCain's senior policy advisor] Nancy Pfotenhauer with other […]

Having just posted (again) on less/fewer with plural C (count) nouns, I was primed to catch the following in Gail Collins's op-ed piece ("Sarah Palin Speaks!") in the NYT yesterday: How many times have you heard McCain promise to slash taxes and pay for it by eliminating unnecessary programs? And who better to help carry out […]