The Boston Globe and Articles Elsewhere
The Boston Globe:
American Dialects from A to Z (Jan. 15, 2012)
A massive dictionary of regional language gets to ‘zydeco’—now what?
Twenty-What? Two Thousand Who? (Jan. 1, 2012)
Saying the new year out loud.
The Word: What We Talked About in 2011 (Dec. 18, 2011)
The year in language.
Is This the Last Print Dictionary? (Nov. 6, 2011)
An American Heritage for the digital age.
That’s Ridiculous (Oct. 23, 2011)
How the absurd became sublime.
Twitter’s Self-Deprecation Revolution (Sep. 24, 2011)
Hashtags are a sly new way to undermine what we say.
Ground Zero (Sep. 11, 2011)
Are these words tied to 9/11 forever?
Birth of the Nerd (Aug. 28, 2011)
The mysterious origins of a familiar character.
+1′tastic (July 31, 2011)
When a number becomes a word.
The 72-Word Door (June 19, 2011)
If dictionaries are tools for clarity, why is their writing so tortured?
Skadoosh! (June 29, 2008)
The story behind the word of the summer.
The New York Times Book Review / Artsbeat:
Letters on the Loose (Nov. 10, 2011)
The alphabet leaps to life in these new picture books.
The Power of Pronouns (Aug. 28, 2011)
A psychologist argues that pronouns, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions reflect our interior lives.
I Me Mine: The Beatles and Their Pronouns (Aug. 28, 2011)
James W. Pennebaker crunches the numbers on Beatles songs and arrives at some fascinating conclusions.
The Jargon of the Novel, Computed (July 31, 2011)
We like to think modern fiction is free from the artificial stylistic pretensions of the past. But computer analysis reveals that linguistic tics unique to fiction writing endure.
Exposing Literary Style, One Word at a Time (July 29, 2011)
Scholars in the digital humanities use computer analysis to zero in on the nitty-gritty of literary style. Many of their tools are now publicly available online.
Slanguage (Apr. 3, 2011)
Can a new slang dictionary possibly hope to uncover any “lost words”? Are there any unmentionables left to mention?
The Dulpickles and Nigmenogs of 1699 (Apr. 1, 2011)
Oxford University’s Bodleian Library recently republished the earliest known dictionary of English-language slang.
The New York Times Sunday Review:
Twitterology: A New Science? (Oct. 30, 2011)
For researchers, Twitter provides virtually limitless data about language in action.
Decoding Your E-Mail Personality (July 24, 2011)
Some experts say e-mail writers can be identified through linguistic and stylistic “fingerprints.”
The Great Language Land Grab (Mar. 27, 2011)
When tech companies engage in legal squabbles about who gets to use our everyday words, what are ordinary speakers of the language to make of it all?
How the War of Words Was Won in Cairo (Feb. 13, 2011)
Clever protest language doesn’t guarantee a successful uprising. But at least it’s fun.
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.”
The Atlantic:
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.
American Speech:
“Among the New Words” (Summer 2011, pp. 192-214)
First installment of quarterly feature on neologisms (with Charles E. Carson).
American Anthropologist:
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)
Slate.com:
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.”
Forbes.com:
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)
