Geoff Nunberg
Geoff Nunberg is the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
He teaches at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of The Way We Talk Now, Going Nucular, Talking Right and The Years of Talking Dangerously. His most recent book is Ascent of the A-Word. His website is www.geoffreynunberg.com.
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Many of those quotes we see on Facebook or Instagram are attributed to authors who never said them. Does it matter when we get a quotation wrong? Linguist Geoff Nunberg says, not always. -
Donald Trump isn't the first politician to use coarse language, but linguist Geoff Nunberg says the 2005 Access Hollywood tape of him discussing women's genitalia wasn't like other live-mic incidents. -
The media have used a variety of epithets to describe white working-class Trump supporters. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says these terms embody the class contention that is central to this year's election. -
While some of his colleagues have criticized the current trend of starting sentences with the phrase, "I feel like," linguist Geoff Nunberg says it's just a case of generational misunderstanding. -
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century evokes another famous tome with "capital" in its title, and makes comparisons inevitable.
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When dictionaries add trendy words like "twerk," they're prioritizing the fleeting language habits of the young, says Geoff Nunberg. And our fascination with novel words tends to eclipse subtle changes in the meanings of old ones — "which are often more consequential," he says.
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The Republican vice presidential pick wants to take another look at programs like Medicare and Social Security. Fresh Air's resident linguist parses the word "entitlement" in its political and nonpolitical contexts. -
Rush Limbaugh said a number of things about Sandra Fluke that created such a stir that he ultimately had to apologize. But most of the reactions focused on that one word: slut. Linguist Geoff Nunberg observes that our reaction to the word says quite a lot about the society we live in.
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Fresh Air's resident linguist explains how the magic of metonymy gave "occupy" its symbolism — and how the word implies a culture that made a bunch of protests feel like a movement.
