by Page Fortna Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, language is being used strategically in a contest over legitimacy in ways that blur important […]
Tag: language
When did kids start swearing like sailors?
by Robin Abcarian The other morning, on the way to school, my eighth-grade niece was regaling me with stories about the costumes kids wore on Halloween. One […]
When a thumbs-up emoji gets a defendant a thumbs-down from a court
by Stephen L. Carter Social media is all atwitter — um, all a-X-er? — about the emoji at the heart of the federal court ruling allowing a […]
April 23 letters to the editor
Cheat River could be big tourist destination On Tuesday, May 23, 1989, Norman Julian wrote a column about the Cheat River published by The Dominion Post, quoting […]
It’s not ‘woke’ to use more specific language
by David L. Ulin I’m trying an experiment in one of the courses I teach. The goal is to stop using the phrase “you guys.” I announced […]
Connecting people with the magical bond of language
BY ASHUTOSH DAS Manal Al Natour is the director of Arabic Studies Program at West Virginia University. In addition to teaching, she acts as a binding force […]
Stanford’s bad words
Words do matter, and we engage in an ongoing process of retiring certain words and adding new ones. Often words become taboo because they are offensive. That […]
We strive toward enlightenment … and language follows suit
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Pitts’ column contains language some readers may find offensive. He intentionally uses this language to illustrate how far we’ve come since such words and […]
Do you know what ‘fascist’ means?
by Nicholas Goldberg Americans know little history and what little they know they forget. That’s one reason we should be careful about throwing around historical allusions and […]
Fuzzy language not helping fight COVID
by Faye Flam People no longer know what to do about the COVID pandemic. Part of the problem is the very language we use to talk about […]
