Articles Elsewhere
Among the New Words (Winter 2012, pp. 491-510) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
The presidential election cycle guarantees a quadrennial infusion of new items into the political lexicon, and the overheated campaign rhetoric of 2012 did not disappoint on this score.
Among the New Words (Fall 2012, pp. 350-368) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
This is the second of a two-part excursion into the fragmented world of twenty-first-century popular music genres and subgenres.
Among the New Words (Summer 2012, pp. 190-207) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
Though the “genrefication” of contemporary popular music is nothing new, there is no question that the music industry has in recent years seen a rapid proliferation of niche genres and subgenres.
Among the New Words (Spring 2012, pp. 89-106) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
Record-breaking attendance marked the American Dialect Society’s 2011 Word of the Year proceedings, held at the annual meeting of the ADS in Portland, Oregon, January 5–7, 2012.
Among the New Words (Winter 2011, pp. 454-479) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
For contemporary word-watchers, it is difficult to avoid the ubiquity of Internet memes.
Among the New Words (Fall 2011, pp. 355-376) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson and Laurence R. Horn)
As a generator of new words in English, the prefix “un-” has a long and distinguished pedigree.
Among the New Words (Summer 2011, pp. 192-214) [pdf]
(with Charles E. Carson)
This year marks the 70th anniversary of “Among the New Words”: Dwight L. Bolinger brought the feature to the pages of American Speech in 1941, after previously writing the new-word column “The Living Language” for the Los Angeles-based magazine Words.
Bigger, Better Google Ngrams: Brace Yourself for the Power of Grammar (Oct. 18, 2012)
An update to Google’s Ngram Viewer gives us a much deeper portrait of how English is changing, but still has some weaknesses.
The Rise of the Zuckerverb: The New Language of Facebook (Sep. 30, 2011)
This is what happens when language is optimized for social data-mining rather than natural communication.
The Corpus in the Court: ‘Like Lexis on Steroids’ (Mar. 4, 2011)
Say goodbye to the dictionary definition. Courts, long dependent on the vagaries of language, have new quantitative tools they can use to precisely pin down how words are used.
Is It Time to Welcome Our New Computer Overlords? (Feb. 17, 2011)
IBM’s Watson computer’s sense of language isn’t as human as it might seem.
Guggenheim Online Forum
The Name Game (Apr. 23-27, 2012)
A good name may be literal or it may seem like poetry. What can linguistics, semiotics, literature, and marketing tell us about what makes a “successful” name? (Sessions 1, 2, 3, live chat)
Lapham’s Quarterly
Reconsiderations: Word for Word (Spring 2012)
A reconsideration of the thesaurus as a 21st-century writing tool.
New York Magazine, Vulture blog:
Chinglish Playwright David Henry Hwang on Bringing Mandarin to Broadway, Growing Up Chinese-American, and Translation Fails (Oct. 27, 2011)
“I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said ‘Deformed Man’s Toilet,’ that kind of thing.”
On the Road to “On Language” (June 2011, pp. 344–345)
Second part of dialogic review of “On Language” review (First part by Robert Moore)
Duke University Press Log:
On the Trail of New Words, from “App” to “Nom” (Mar. 30, 2011)
Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) Newsletter:
William Safire (1929–2009) (Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall 2009)
Was Cronkite Really the First “Anchorman”? (July 18, 2009)
How we came to use the term.
Czar Wars (Dec. 29, 2008)
How did a term for Russian royalty work its way into American government?
Who First Put “Lipstick on a Pig”? (Sep. 10, 2008)
The origins of the porcine proverb.
Pro·cras·ti·na·tion (May 14, 2008)
How we got a word for “putting things off.”
Keeping Up With the Smoneses (Aug. 16, 2006)
Are American newlyweds blending their last names?
How Does the Pentagon Say “Body Bag”? (Apr. 4, 2006)
Hint: It’s not “transfer tube.”
Spreading the Word (Apr. 23, 2009)
How language is made and why it grows.
“From A to Zimmer” (Column on OUPblog):
Building the Ultimate Spelling Bee (Oct. 30, 2008)
The Last Word (Apr. 10, 2008)
Intractable Usage Disputes: “Less” and “None” (Feb. 7, 2008)
The Super Bowl and Super Tuesday: How’d They Get So “Super”? (Jan. 31, 2008)
“Big-Up” on the Rise (Jan. 24, 2008)
“Primary” Colors (Jan. 17, 2008)
“Subprime” Ready for Prime Time (Jan. 10, 2008)
Should “Decimate” be Annihilated? (Jan. 3, 2008)
Our Nameless Decade: What “Aught” We Call It? (Dec. 27, 2007)
Quixotic Coinages: The Failure of the Epicene Pronoun (Dec. 20, 2007)
From “Nuclear Winter” to “Carbon Summer” (Dec. 13, 2007)
New Words on the Block: Back When “Movies” Were Young (Dec. 6, 2007)
The Shocking Story of “Tase” (Nov. 29, 2007)
“Word of the Year” Mania! (Nov. 15, 2007)
How Do “Miss Steaks” Go Unnoticed? It’s Along Story (Nov. 8, 2007)
When Spellcheckers Attack: Perils of the Cupertino Effect (Nov. 1, 2007)
Extending the History of Words: The Case of “Ms.” (Oct. 25, 2007)
Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings? (Oct. 18, 2007)
Dictionary Day is Coming… Oct. 11, 2007
One-Hit Wonders: From Hapax to Googlewhacks (Oct. 4, 2007)
The Lowly Hyphen: Reports of Its Death are Greatly Exaggerated (Sep. 27, 2007)
Oomphy Wordsmithery of the Anglosphere: New Entries in the Shorter OED (Sep. 20, 2007)
How the OED Got Shorter (Sep. 13, 2007)
The Joy (and Sorrow) of “Schadenfreude” (Sep. 6, 2007)
Prepositions: “Dull Little Words” or Unsung Linguistic Heroes? (Aug. 30, 2007)
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism! (Aug. 23, 2007)
“Mob” Mentality, from Jonathan Swift to Karl Rove (Aug. 16, 2007)
Phrasal Patterns 2: Electric Boogaloo (Aug. 9, 2007)
Pouring New Wine Into Old Phrasal Bottles (Aug. 2, 2007)
Compounding Carbon Confusion (July 26, 2007)
A Poptastic Geekfest for Infoholics (July 19, 2007)
Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia (July 12, 2007)
Tracking the Most Miniscule, Uh, Minuscule of Errors (July 5, 2007)
On the Front Lines of English, from “Thirdhand Smoke” to “Newsrotica” (June 28, 2007)