Geoffrey Nunberg talks about Talking Right: How Conservatives Hijacked the English Language. Nunberg is a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information and a Consulting Full Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University. Since 1989, he has done a regular language feature for NPR's Fresh Air.
Bio
Geoffrey Nunberg
Geoffrey Nunberg is an adjunct full professor at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information. He is also a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and a consulting professor in the Stanford Department of Linguistics. His linguistics research includes work in semantics and pragmatics, text classification, and written-language structure, and he also works and writes on the social and cultural implications of digital technologies.
Mr. Nunberg does a feature on language on the NPR show "Fresh Air" and has written numerous commentaries on language for the Sunday New York Times Week in Review, as well as for other periodicals. He’s also contributed occasional "letters from America" to the BBC4 series "State of the Union" and was the former chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.
The full title of his most recent book is Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show.
After hearing this, I'm so interested in the undervalued role linguistics plays in clouding political progress. More time should be spent exploring the diverging views of words like "values," "freedom," etc.
Finally, someone who expresses the frustrations of so many Americans concerning the Republican spin of the political language! Republicans have managed to turn the word “liberal” into an insult. But Democrats are just as much to blame—Instead of standing up and saying that they are proud to be liberal, they have cowered and mumbled that really they are just “progressive.” In doing so, they are playing right into Republican hands. Nunberg really hits it when he remarks that “if you bail out on the liberal label, as Democrats have done, you merely leave it to the Right to define your own name, the name that people will use to think of you.”