Clik here to view.
Men Are Sarcastic, Women Are Hot: Gender and Language in Rate My Professors
I may have wasted a perfectly good hour engaging with an interactive study that, by its author’s own admission, has no place on his CV. And perhaps my cynical enjoyment of the results I produced has to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Code That’s So Hard to Break
When you slip inside the skin of a language, you absorb not just its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, but also its particular tics and pauses, its discourse markers. In English these are the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Email, the French Way
I said that I was almost done with French language posts, but I cannot leave this country without writing about flourishes. For a variety of reasons, I have been party to a number of email exchanges in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Language of Airportland
In a few days, I will be leaving France for Airportland, whose delights I will savor for about 11 hours before I find myself once again in the United States. Most readers have spent time in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Fudging’ in Flight: Dubbed Movies on Airplanes
It makes sense for movies shown on airplanes to be appropriate for most if not all ages. That limits the selection, needless to say. On my flight home from France, I chose Three Billboards Outside...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That Adverb in the Fashion Statement
Kevin Lamarque, Reuters, Newscom Readers who wax impatient with language minutiae should really skip this post. The news this past week has been full of the message on the back of Melania Trump’s Zara...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Messages by the Numbers
Remember favorite numbers? Mine was seven. I liked how it combined the magic numbers three and four; how it was prime; how it looked, especially when my first-grade teacher executed it in Palmer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Everybody, Parlons Français!
Château François 1er, in Villers-Cotterêts, France For some time now, we have seen this as English’s moment. Greek had its turn, as did Latin and French, to be the so-called lingua franca, or global...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Sherpas’ of the Beltway
Retired Senator Jon Kyl is now a Sherpa. As The New York Times writes, “In Washington, a Sherpa is an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.” Widely...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When 2 Negatives Don’t Make a Positive
Those of us who learned about double negatives in grammar class understood them as grammatical no-nos. You were not to say, “I don’t have no bananas,” because, by denying the absence of bananas, you...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Getting a Fix on ‘Fixers’
One of the many astonishing developments, for language mavens, in the unfolding drama of the Mueller investigation has been the casual use of the term fixer. Mainstream media outlets have taken to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Itsy-Bitsy Teenie-Weenie Yellow-Polka-Dot Emoji
French dancer Micheline Bernardini modeling the first bikini I have only recently started using emojis, and I often choose the wrong ones — the other day, for instance, I meant to send an "astonished"...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Privilege of Language
When Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky announced that he opposed public funding for humanities curricula, citing the study of French language and literature in particular as a discipline he’d like to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Is the Origin of ‘the Worm Has Turned’?
A friend asked me the other day about the origin of the phrase the worm has turned. I was too embarrassed to admit that not only did I not know the origin, I wasn’t even sure what the proverb meant....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gals, Guys, and Speech
Last week, I read two provocative articles about women and speech. One concerned how women talk, the other how women are talked about. The first article, by Rachel Thompson, on Mashable, noted the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Hurrah for the Long Sentence
I am once again teaching Gertrude Stein in Paris. Struck anew by the modernity of her sentences (of Ezra Pound: “She said he was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New French Lingo: du Coup
Each time I stay in France for an extended period, I become aware of a new expression that’s infiltrated the language. Just as the occasional sojourner in America might be surprised to discover woke or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where Do We Begin? Language Learning and Grammar
This fall, I am not only teaching in Paris but temporarily directing a program of study abroad. Among the many other changes this shift has produced in my daily life, I find myself no longer on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thank You for Your Frankness
The term Lingua Franca, as many readers know, stems from a 16th-century Mediterranean reference to the language used between speakers of different tongues as “the language of the Francs,” the Francs...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Sherpas’ of the Beltway
Retired Senator Jon Kyl is now a Sherpa. As The New York Times writes, “In Washington, a Sherpa is an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.” Widely...
View Article