Jordain Carney, "House will have to vote for tax-cut bill again", TheHill 12/19/2017, originally included this sentence: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also seized on the ruling immediately, saying Republicans in a "mad dash to provide tax breaks for their billionaire campaign contributors" had ran a fowl of the chamber's rules. I didn't get a screenshot in […]
From "In the Groove, Jazz and Beyond", 12/17/2017: We also pay tribute to another tragedy; the murder of John Lennon with jazz covers of several of his tunes. Prepositional phrases like "with jazz covers of several of his tunes" are multiply ambiguous. Thus with can be comitative ("They rode with Kim") or instrumental ("open the can […]
A lot of the most effective political keywords derive their force from a maneuver akin to what H. W. Fowler called "legerdemain with two senses," which enables you to slip from one idea to another without ever letting on that you’ve changed the subject. Values oscillates between mores (which vary from one group to another) […]
Two powerful agencies of the PRC central government, Zhōnggòng zhōngyāng jìlǜ jiǎnchá wěiyuánhuì 中共中央纪律检查委员会 ("Central Commission for Discipline Inspection") and Zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó jiānchá bù 中华人民共和国监察部 ("People's Republic of China Ministry of Supervision"), have issued "bā xiàng guīdìng biǎoqíng bāo 八项规定表情包" ("emoticons for the eight provisions / stipulations / rules"); see also here. The biǎoqíng bāo 表情包 (lit., "expression […]
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TJJ from Napa CA writes: Dr. Dan Jurafsky at Stanford suggested I contact you. I have a statue I purchased years ago from a Humane Society fundraiser sale. It is made of some sort of stone and has a rabbit on one side and some strange writing on the bottom. It looks like it might […]
From Krista Ryu: Recently on the internet, there was an interesting photo posted that pointed out the unique feature of Southeastern dialect of Korean: tones (some scholars call it pitch, as it is different from the tones of languages such as Mandarin). The internet post had the following photo and a question: "is it true […]
With over 980 million monthly active users, WeChat is an extremely popular messaging app in China. However, in the Orwellian climate of the PRC, you had better watch your language carefully, lest you get whisked off to jail without trial. Here are some words that can result in your incarceration:
Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin, "CDC gets list of forbidden words: fetus, transgender, diversity", Washington Post 12/15/2017: The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s […]
I've previously noted that Donald Trump sometimes introduces semi-chanted passages into his political oratory — see "Trump's prosody"; "Trumpchant in B flat"; "Tunes, political and geographical". Here's another example, from his 12/8/2017 campaign rally for Roy Moore in Pensacola: Your browser does not support the audio element. So get out and vote for Roy Moore!
In recent years, a rapid and important cultural change in the understanding of gender has been taking place in American society and beyond. A Harris poll from this year, reported in a Time Magazine cover story, found that “20% of millennials say they are something other than strictly straight and cisgender, compared to 7% of […]
Roy Moore's 12/13/2017 non-concession speech started out this way: Your browser does not support the audio element. We are indeed in a struggle to preserve our republic, our civilization, and our religion. And he goes on in the same vein, with another rhetorical tricolon: Your browser does not support the audio element. This particular race […]
The following is a reply from Emily M. Bender, Natasha Warner and myself to Geoff Pullum’s recent posts (A letter saying they won, 12/4/2017; Courtesy and personal pronoun choice, 12/6/2017). Respected senior linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum recently used the widely-read platform of Language Log to remark on the fact that his grammatical tolerance of singular […]