Interview with Renee Montagne on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about taking over the “On Language” column.
When William Safire died last September, the veteran columnist for The New York Times left vacant a post that he had filled for more than 30 years. Safire originated the “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine in 1979 and continued to write it until his death.
This week, the Times Magazine announced the name of the man who would take over the role of exploring and increasing the vocabularies of Americans: Ben Zimmer.
The name should be familiar to word fans already. Zimmer is the executive producer of two Web sites, visualthesaurus.com and vocabulary.com, that cater to word freaks. After Safire died, Zimmer wrote the column remembering his colleague’s contribution to linguistics. Still, Zimmer admits that his predecessor’s shadow is long.
“It is a little intimidating, I have to say, especially because I can’t reproduce William Safire’s very distinctive voice,” Zimmer tells NPR’s Renee Montagne. “I’ll put my own stamp on it. I’ll come at it in some ways in a more scholarly way because of my background in linguistics and linguistic anthropology. But also, I will be casting a wide net. You know, everything from technology to pop culture, high-brow, low-brow, everything in between. I’ll be on the lookout for all sorts of new developments that are happening in language.”
(Show page, audio, transcript; see also Media Bistro: FishbowlNY)