[Usually when I send out book ads, I include the introduction or several pages of excerpts. In the case of Geoff Nunberg's "The Way We Talk Now", however, a couple of the pieces have already appeared on the list: The Dactyls of October http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/1994/The.Dactyls.of.October.html Virtual Rialto http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/1995/Virtual.Rialto.html So have a couple of his columns that aren't in the book: My Computer http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rre/message/903 Gimcrack Nation http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rre/message/258 A few more of his columns can be found here: Selected Pieces From "Fresh Air" on NPR http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/FreshAir.html And some of his longer articles are here: Geoff's articles in the American Prospect http://www.prospect.org/authors/nunberg-g.html Geoff is a linguist who chairs the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and he's also a world-class conversationalist, so I know you'll like the book.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" option. For information about RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 10:21:35 PST From: Geoffrey Nunberg <nunbergat_private> The Way We Talk Now by Geoffrey Nunberg Houghton Mifflin, 2001. http://thewaywetalknow.com/ What does it say, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg wonders, that country music has such a longstanding obsession with -- or maybe it's an addiction for -- puns? Why do Americans embrace a national anthem whose sentence structure makes it almost impossible to understand? Why have movies given us so many memorable phrases, and television so few? What do recent Internet coinages and domain names tell us about our cyberculture? Since the late 1980s, Geoffrey Nunberg has been keeping tabs on America's verbal manifestations and manipulations, and he has broadcast his sightings as a regular feature on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" and in magazines such as Forbes and Fortune. Now one of America's most well-known word spotters has collected his opinions in a volume of witty essays that make sense of our frenetic, morphing world. Nunberg is as witty as he is perceptive. "The Way We Talk Now" is a book that can tune your linguistic antennae more finely. -- Charles Matthews, The San Jose Mercury News. The Way We Talk Now is witty, contemporary and urbane -- sure to appeal to anyone who's ever reflected on why "groovy" passed out of common parlance, or why teenagers say "like". What is outstanding is Nunberg's ability to examine language, that most everyday currency, and turn slang into the sublime. In a chatty, accessible style, he takes American catchwords and colloquialisms and turns them into signifiers. In Nunberg's world, even the lyrics of country music songs shine: "The sense of loss and estrangement is implicit in the language of the lyrics, too, as the ordinary expressions we use to talk about our lives break down to reveal darker meanings". The Way We Talk Now is the kind of book you just can't stop talking about. -- Meredith Broussard, Philadelphia City Paper ============= TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface THE PASSING SCENE The Choice of Sophie {1989} Vietnamese for Travelers {1989} You Know {1992} Yesss, Indeed! {1995} Look-See {1994} The N-Word {1995} Some Pig! {1995} A Few of My Favorite Words {1995} Rex Ipse {1995} An Interjection for the Age {1997} The Last Post {1997} As a Cigarette Should {1997} Go Figure {1998} The Past Is Another Country {1998} Yadda Yadda Doo {1998} Gen Z and Counting {1999} Wordplay in the Country {1999} Turn-of-the-Century {2000} WORD HISTORIES Hoosiers {1989} Easy on the Zeal {1992} The Decline of Slang {1992} The Last Galoot {1992} Uber and Out {1993} The Burbs {1995} Rebirth of the Cool {1996} Remembering Ned Ludd {1996} Paparazzo and Friends {1997} The Cult Quotient {1997} Portmanteau Words {1999} Ten Suffixes That Changed the World {1999} The Edge {2000} No Picnic {2000} Community Sting {2000} POLITICS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Force and Violence {1990} Eastern Questions {1991} A Suffix in the Sand {1991} PC {1991} Party Down {1996} Standard Issue {1997} Group Grope {1998} The Jewish Question {2000} Only Contract {2000} Chad Row {2000} THE TWO R'S I Put a Spell on You {1990} Naming of Parts {1994} Reading for the Plot {1994} Split Decision {1995} Sex and the Singular Verb {1996} Verbed Off {1997} Hell in a Handcar {1999} Distinctions {2000} Points in Your Favor {2000} Shall Game {2001} Literacy Literacy {2001} TECHNICAL TERMS The Dactyls of October {1995} Virtual Rialto {1995} The Talking Gambit {1997} Lost in Space {1997} A Wink is As Good As a Nod {1997} How the Web Was Won {1998} The Software We Deserve {1998} Have It My Way {1998} The Writing on the Walls {1999} Its Own Reward {2000} Hackers {2000} BUSINESS TALK You're Out of Here {1996} Whaddya Know? {1998} Slides Rule {1999} Come Together, Right Now {1999} It's the Thought That Matters {2000} A Name Too Far {2000} Having Issues {2000} VALEDICTION Pack It In! {1999} ===== FROM THE PREFACE Over the thirteen years that I've been doing language commentaries for the National Public Radio program Fresh Air, I've occasionally recorded several pieces at a time. So it happens now and then that I run into friends who say "I heard you on the radio yesterday" without my knowing which piece aired. When I ask which one they heard, it sometimes takes them a minute to remember; there will be an embarrassed pause, followed by something like "Gee, let me think -- I was turning left off Folsom onto Ninth ..." I can sympathize. That recession from consciousness is an inevitable effect of the way most of us listen to the radio nowadays, our minds darting nimbly between the program, the calls we have to make when we get to the office, and the jerk in the SUV who just cut us off. When we get out of the car, it can feel like waking up: we file away what we heard in the same part of the brain where dreams are stored. But then, that's pretty much the way we hear most of the talk that comes at us. It lingers for a few seconds in short-term memory, and then it evanesces. Ten minutes later we can recall what we were told but not how. Even the strains and cracks of language escape our notice; like the incongruities of dreams, they're obvious only when we reflect on them in the light of day. And as with dreams, it can be hard to discern the work that talk is doing, over and above getting us from point A to point B. The pieces collected here are efforts to snatch some insights from the torrent of our talk in the brief interval before it fades out of hearing. Taken together, the topics are a jumble, but that's probably a fair picture of our collective mind over the past decade: PC ... downsize ... nigger ... Luddite ... community ... yadda yadda ... postmodern ... Are you OK with that? ... virtual ... Ebonics ... chad ... hackers ... whatever! Some of these are the keywords of our culture; others are as fleeting as the voices that come over the car radio. In either case, though, it's sometimes more interesting to sneak up on words rather than tackle them head on. That's the way linguists like to work: we fasten on some inconspicuous detail of usage and worry it until a crack opens and we can glimpse the hurly-burly going on outside. And for these purposes it really isn't necessary to focus on the important words. You can do just as well prowling around the proletarian quarters of the vocabulary, where suffixes and interjections live out their ordinary lives. The more mundane the setting, the more pleasure you take in turning up some unexpected revelation; it's like happening on a Goya at a garage sale. Those revealing minutiae can be compelling, precisely because we're normally unaware of them -- they evoke the uncanny feeling that we have when we realize that our unconscious has inadvertently given itself away. It doesn't take any special training or perspicacity to notice such things, once you get into the habit of cocking your ears for them. But it's useful to keep an open mind as well. I'm not one of those panglossian linguists who think that everything happens for the best in our language. I hear a lot of talk that I am content to observe from the sidelines; for example, I personally prefer to call problems problems and to reserve the word issue for matters like universal health care. But I'm not comfortable with the style of criticism that calls attention to language only to deplore it. If you think you're smarter than the language, you're liable not to attend to what it's saying. end
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