language

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• 2/12/2023
  

  The Case For Calling the Language "American"

  by Ilan Stavans

  The history of pragmatic adaptation that built the American form of English is reflected in its present status as the world's second language. It's not jingoistic, just accurate, to declare the particularity of the American tongue. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  2/6/2023
  

  Madeline Kripke Built an Immense—and Bawdy—Dictionary Collection

  One woman's passion for collecting has been an invaluable resource for studies of the evolution of slang, profanity and vulgarisms; after her recent death, an epic quest to preserve the collection ensued. 

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  1/5/2023
  

  Alphabet Politics: What Caused the Development of Writing?

  by Josephine Quinn

  Much remains unknown about the earliest development of written language; two new books make important contributions.   

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  11/29/2022
  

  Y'all's Time Has Come

  by David B. Parker

  The South already has a pronoun that transcends singularity, plurality and gender. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/20/2022
  

  India in a Different Voice

  by Maya Jasanoff

  Learning Hindi during a sabattical presented a researcher with the chance to engage with Indian history outside of the frame of English, and to grasp the power struggles pushing the country toward authoritarian nationalism today. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/5/2022
  

  The Antiabortion Movement's Victory in the War of Language

  by Jennifer L. Holland

  The antiabortion movement was able to overcome American skepticism of enshrining religious views into law and demands by women for full citizenship by turning the language of rights to apply to fetuses. It remains to be seen if this language will lead to a national ban on abortion in the name of fetal personhood. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1/10/2022
  

  How the Chinese Language Modernized

  Jing Tsu's book examines the ways that the Chinese written language has survived waves of iconoclasm and shifts in the politics of cultural authority. 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/15/2021
  

  What Does it Mean to Call Someone a "Male Chauvinist Pig"?

  by Julie Willett

  Merging the term "chauvinism" from the old left and the radical 1960s desire to render authority grotesque, the term emerged with the second wave of feminism. But today some of the sexists labeled with it appear to have turned it into a badge of honor. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/12/2021
  

  How Native Students Fought Back against Abuse and Assimilation at US Boarding Schools

  by Sarah Klotz

  Young Native students like Ernest Knocks Off were not passive victims of forced assimiliation in Indian residential schools; they fought – in his case, to his death – to retain the language and culture the schools sought to expunge.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/4/2021
  

  Where Gender-Neutral Pronouns Come From

  The invention of pronouns to better address gender has been part of the English language for a long time, as has moral panic about the degradation of culture and speech. 

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• 5/23/2021
  

  The Ethics of the "N-Word" in the Classroom

  by Alan Singer

  Neither censorious expungement nor free speech absolutism offer good practical guidelines for teaching historical sources that include racial slurs. A professor of history education explains his approach. 

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• 3/14/2021
  

  The Birth, and Life, of a Word

  by Ralph Keyes

  One of the most widely-used terms in discussions of American racism has its roots in a campaign by two pro-slavery writers to troll abolitionists through a fake tract promoting "miscegenation."

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• SOURCE: Variety
  12/9/2020
  

  Nicolas Cage Hosts ‘History of Swear Words’ Series on Netflix

  While generally disapproved in polite company, swear words are a powerful and entrenched aspect of language around the world. Nic Cage will host a series examining their historical origins and use. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  7/16/2020
  

  Zounds! What the Fork are Minced Oaths? And Why are We Still Fecking Using them Today?

  by Kirk Hazen

  Minced oaths have historically performed a very specific role: providing a weakened but socially acceptable form of an actual religious oath, swear or curse.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/26/2020
  

  A Debate Over Identity and Race Asks, Are African-Americans ‘Black’ or ‘black’?

  For proponents of capitalizing black, there are grammatical reasons — it is a proper noun, referring to a specific group of people with a shared political identity, shaped by colonialism and slavery. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  4/1/2020
  

  Singular They: Nonbinary Language in the Historical Community

  As the dictionary’s staff wrote in explaining their pick, “English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun... and as a consequence ‘they’ has been used for this purpose for over 600 years.”

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/31/2020
  

  The Case Against Waging ‘War’ on the Coronavirus

  There is a long history of world leaders framing fights against disease within the context of war.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/6/20
  

  The English history of African American English

  by Shana Poplack

  Many of the features stereotypically associated with contemporary African American Vernacular English have a robust precedent in the history of the English language.

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• SOURCE: AHA Perspectives on History
  12/2/19
  

  James Grossman Writes Article on Career Diversity: "Revising Revisited: Words Matter When It Comes to Career Diversity"

  by James Grossman

  Historians need to write and speak carefully. A single word or phrase, a particularly evocative metaphor, can undermine a nuanced argument pointing in a very different direction.

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• SOURCE: BBC
  9/22/19
  

  Merriam Webster added 'they' as a non-binary pronoun. Here's a brief history of gender neutral pronouns

  These identifiers are nothing new and have actually been used throughout the history of literature.