Ben Zimmer

Mary Elizabeth Williams, “The New York Times’ F-word Problem” (Salon, Aug. 10, 2012)

When I mentioned the STFU debacle on Twitter yesterday, the great linguist and former Times columnist Ben Zimmer leapt helpfully into the fray, offering some outstanding recent examples of The Times’ profanity avoidance.

Read the rest here.

Interview on the WBUR show “Here and Now” about “Monday” and other covert racial and ethnic slurs. (Aug. 2, 2012)

An off-duty police officer recently called a Major League Baseball player a “Monday” and as a result, lost his job.

It happened at a minor league game earlier this summer: Officer John A. Perreault of Leominster, Massachusetts taunted Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford, an African-American who last season was seen by fans as a symbol of his team’s collapse.

The story brought to light the fact that the word “Monday” has become a slur that is slang for the n-word.

Boston Globe language columnist Ben Zimmer traced the usage of “Monday,” in the online Urban Dictionary and found that it started popping up in 2006, many say on the East Coast.

It was the popular comedian Russell Peters, a Canadian of Indian descent, who put “Monday” on the map. In a January 2008 standup routine for Def Comedy Jam (widely circulated on YouTube), Peters tells of a Bostonian referring to blacks as “Mondays” and giving the same bigoted clarification that “nobody likes Mondays.” “White people are getting real…clever with their racism,” Peters jokes ruefully.

(Show page, audio, related Boston Globe column)

Katy Steinmetz, “Wednesday Words: Weird Slurs, Olympics Slang and More” (Time, Aug. 1, 2012)

Monday (n., slang): used by whites or other non-blacks as a hostile term of abuse or contempt for a black person. A black Boston Red Sox outfielder recently alleged that an off-duty police officer had called him “Monday.” An investigation ensued, and the officer was soon dismissed for making racist comments. This, of course, left sports media confused about how Monday, a seemingly innocuous day of the week, had become covert racial abuse. Language guru Ben Zimmer did his own investigation and traced the usage back to at least 2004, explaining that comedian Russell Peters later “put ‘Monday’ on the map” in a comedy routine about how “white people are getting real…clever with their racism.” The comedian’s reasoning: “Nobody likes Mondays.” Perhaps “Friday”seemed a bit too high-brow for their purposes.

Interview on WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks” about the history of English idioms (July 31, 2012).

Actors tell each other to “break a leg” before going on stage. Here at Charlotte Talks we like to do shows that are “a horse of a different color” and we certainly strive to spend time “off the beaten path.” So today, we explore the history behind some of the most well-known phrases in the English language. Some histories may be known but others will be “brand spanking new.” And, along the way, our experts will debunk some phrase origins to help you take them “with a grain of salt.” So, don’t “bust our chops,” “if you can’t beat us, join us” for a history of idioms.

Guests:
Ralf Thiede – Associate Professor for Applied Linguistics, UNC Charlotte
Ben Zimmer – Executive Producer, Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com

(Show page, audio)

Interview on the WGBH show Boston Public Radio about the increasing casualness of political communication. (July 9, 2012)

FDR’s fireside chats are among the earliest examples of a president speaking directly to the people. But what if he had been texting, and tweeting instead? What kind of persona would he have? And how much folksy charm would he be able to get away with?

Linguist Ben Zimmer looks at how today’s politicians, particularly Mitt Romney and President Obama, are getting extremely casual and faux-familiar when it comes to communicating with us in email and out there in cyberspace.

(Show page, audio, related Boston Globe column)

Interview on the American Public Media/NPR show “Marketplace” about President Obama’s “Betting on America” slogan (July 5, 2012)

(Show page, audio)

Interviewed by Sarah Fishko for the WNYC show “Fishko Files” about the origins of the title “Ms.” (June 28, 2012)

Ben Zimmer – a language columnist, linguist and lexicographer – traced the earliest origins of “Ms.” to a November 1901 edition of The Sunday Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts. In the article the writer called for “a more comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views to their domestic situation.”

(Show page, related On Language column, Visual Thesaurus column)

Interview on “The Conversation with Ross Reynolds” (KUOW Seattle) about the latest campaign rhetoric. (June 26, 2012)

A recent article in The Washington Post points out that most members of congress are actually avoiding the term “congress” in their campaign ads, since the institution is so unpopular right now. What other buzzwords are politicians avoiding in 2012? And which ones are they emphasizing? We talk to Ben Zimmer about trends in campaign rhetoric in 2012.

(Show page, RealAudio, mp3, download: starts at 6:45 in the audio)

Interviewed on the CBC Radio Show “Q with Jian Ghomeshi” over how dictionaries get caught in the crossfire in debates over the meaning of “marriage” (at 16:30 in the audio). (June 15, 2012)

(Audio, related Boston Globe column, Visual Thesaurus column)