According to Andrew Rosenthal ("Chris Christie: But Enough About Mitt, Let’s Talk About Me", NYT 8/29/2012): Gov. Chris Christie is getting rave reviews today for his performance at the National Republican Convention, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he did a huge amount of good for the three most important people in his […]
"Restoring American Exceptionalism" has recently become an important Republican slogan. It's a featured theme for Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Glenn Beck. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul at least bow in its direction, as do Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. Last month, there were hundreds of "Restoring American Exceptionalism" events during National School Choice Week (Jan. 22-28, 2012), under the leadership of […]
Nekesa Mumbi Moody, "Adele top winner with 6 Grammys", AP (in Boston Globe) 2/12/2012: "Mom, gold is good!" Adele shouted as she took the album of the year trophy. The corresponding audio: [Audio clip: view full post to listen]
"Sarah Palin talks Florida GOP battle", Justice with Judge Jeanine, Fox News, 1/29/2012: [Audio clip: view full post to listen] You gotta rage against the machine at this point in order to defend our republic and save what is- what is good and secure and prosperous about our nation – we need somebody who's engaged […]
This afternoon I passed by a group of high school kids from China going down the street outside of Williams Hall, the office building in which I work. One of the girls said merrily, "Bur'ao", by which she meant Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) bù zhīdào 不知道 ("[I] don't know"). The retroflex final -r is well […]
Sam B. writes: I've noticed that the hashtag has bled out beyond its origin as a way of grouping similar messages on Twitter by topic (ie #TahrirSquare, #fukushima, #election, etc) Now, they're sort of being used in a bizarre syntax of their own, as an aside at the end of a statement. In these cases, […]
LS, in Charleston, West Virginia, writes: I have a question I've thought about for years, and today, when I decided to poke around google, I stumbled upon a blog that had your name. Can you tell me why, in southern dialects where the velar nasal changes to a coronal nasal, there are two exceptions? I […]
Like other regular readers of Andrew Sullivan's web log, I was not surprised that he was happy about Sarah Palin's decision not to run for U.S. president in 2012. However, one aspect of his commentary ("Rejoice!", 10/5/2011) did surprise me. The puzzle is in the second sentence: Our Three Year National Nightmare Is Over! Palin […]
A couple of days ago, Greta van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin on Fox ("'Maverick' Palin vs. 'Quasi Reality Show'", 9/27/2011). Out of the whole 16-minute segment, one word got the lion's share of the coverage. Thus Sheila Marikar, "Sarah Palin: ‘Is a Title and Campaign Too Shackle-y?’", ABC News 9/27/2011: A Palin presidency: Too “shackle-y?” […]
Andrew Malcolm, "New gaffe: Obama confuses Jews with janitors", LA Times 9/26/2011: Here is what the president actually said, catching himself almost in time but not quite: If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that […]
There's some interesting socio-politico-linguistic discussion, along with links to a lot more of the same, in Dylan Stableford's post "Was the Associated Press transcription of Obama’s CBC speech ‘racist’?", The Cutline 9/26/2011. I don't have time this morning to add significantly to this discussion, but in any case, I'd largely be recapitulating the material covered […]
Less than 50 years ago, this is what the future of data visualization looked like — H. Beam Piper, "Naudsonce", Analog 1962: She had been using a visibilizing analyzer; in it, a sound was broken by a set of filters into frequency-groups, translated into light from dull red to violet paling into pure white. It […]
Modern mass media expose us to a lot of political speech, and therefore to a lot of journalistic commentary on politicians' individual speaking styles. Regular readers know that I don't generally have a lot of sympathy for attempts to tag Politician X with his or her allegedly characteristic X-isms, whether it's the collections of Bushisms […]