For period dramas like Downton Abbey and Mad Men, historical authenticity is crucial to the viewer experience. Vigilant designers work from photos to accurately recreate everything from kitchenware to hairstyles. But what about the dialogue?…
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Tagged with “lexicon”
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The man who hunts for anachronisms in Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and Edith Wharton. - Slate Magazine
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language mad men downton abbey
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Lexicon Valley: Seeking a gender neutral alternative to he and she. - Slate Magazine
In the third and final installment of our Lexicon Valley series about language and gender, Bob Garfield and I discuss the ongoing quest for a single, more equitable alternative to “he” and “she.” Since at least the 1850s, English speakers have made many unsuccessful attempts to introduce an epicene pronoun into the language. But University of Michigan professor Anne Curzan argues that we don’t need such a word, since we already have a perfectly acceptable, if controversial, alternative—just use “they.” Don’t like that solution? Maybe she’ll convince you.
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language
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Lexicon Valley: How grammatical gender changes our thinking, and how English lost its genders. - Slate Magazine
Does talking about an object as masculine or feminine somehow cause us to think of it that way? In the second part of a Lexicon Valley series about language and gender, Bob Garfield and I discuss the fascinating research by Stanford psychologist Lera Boroditsky involving grammar and perception. We talk also about what may have happened to grammatical gender in English. That’s right, once upon a time we had grammatical gender too. But then we lost it.
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language
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Lexicon Valley: Why should we care if a language goes extinct? - Slate Magazine
By some estimates, approximately half of all languages currently alive on Earth will become extinct during this century. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000-plus tongues, many spoken by only tens or hundreds of people. But what exactly do we lose when a language dies without ever having been documented? Is it equivalent to, say, species extinction? Listen as Bob Garfield and I discuss the race to preserve what is arguably humanity’s most impressive achievement.
Tagged with lexicon valley linguistics language
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Lexicon Valley: Beginning and ending all of our thoughts with “so.” - Slate Magazine
Have you noticed the seemingly stratospheric rise of the word “so” in recent years? People use it not only as a conjunction or an intensifying adverb—as in “That’s so awesome!”—but also to begin or end sentences in a manner pregnant with implied meaning. So … Bob Garfield and I set out to determine what this sort of “so” might in fact be accomplishing. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/04/lexicon_valley_beginning_and_ending_all_of_our_thoughts_with_so_.html
Tagged with linguistics grammar lexicon valley bob garfield language english
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Lexicon Valley: Webster’s Third, the most controversial dictionary ever published. - Slate Magazine
In the early 1960s, amid a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, a burgeoning civil rights movement here at home, and a dawning countercultural revolution, America’s intellectual class was in an utter freak out over a dictionary. That’s right, the 1961 publication of Webster’s Third Edition incited otherwise sober-minded newspaper and magazine writers to declare nothing less than the end of the world. Bob Garfield and I talk to author David Skinner about his forthcoming book, The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published.
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Lexicon Valley: Why we keep saying “between you and I.” - Slate Magazine
Do you flinch when someone says “between you and I”? Textbook English tells us it’s ungrammatical, and yet it’s arguably more common than the officially sanctioned “between you and me.” Tennessee Williams, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare—all were guilty of using “I” when the sentence cried out for “me.” Or maybe they weren’t so guilty after all. Bob Garfield and I discuss the oft-uttered, much-maligned “between you and I.”
Tagged with linguistics grammar lexicon valley bob garfield language english
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Lexicon Valley: Why we think we can’t end a sentence with a preposition. - Slate Magazine
We all learned you’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. But from where did this alleged rule come? And why does it encumber us with such labored sentences as the one preceding this? In the first episode of Slate’s new language program Lexicon Valley, producer Mike Vuolo and On the Media co-host Bob Garfield explore the history of the terminal preposition rule, and whether there are good reasons to follow it.
Tagged with linguistics grammar lexicon valley bob garfield language english
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Simon Winchester on his book The Meaning of Everything
Simon Winchester discusses his book The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Video here: http://ww3.tvo.org/video/177526/simon-winchester-his-book-meaning-everything
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SXSW: Linguistic Mythbusting: The Fake Language of the Web
Presentation from SXSW 2011.
When the New York Times banned the word "Tweet" from it’s pages, it marked the first time a major publication had formally rejected a Internet-born branded verb. As new behaviors are created online, our culture struggles with ways to define them and often settles on flawed nomenclature. In this hour we will take a look at some of the most misleading words from the digital lexicon and try to pick a few to banish forever.
Tagged with sxsw new york times language lexicon web linguistics english