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‘America First’, ‘Common Wealth’: Notes on the Public Language of Our Times
America First. In his big foreign policy speech yesterday, Donald Trump said that his guiding principle as president would be…
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The Historical Case for ‘Czech Republic,’ the Bonus Case for ‘the Czechlands’
We may be nearing the home stretch here, but I didn’t want to get there without mentioning the case for…
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‘Modernism in America’ — Online Poetry Course
Elisa (Lisa) New is a professor of English at Harvard, with specialities in modern American literature and poetry. Earlier this…
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Team Czechia Makes Its Case
In the previous posts collected in this Thread, I argued that the country officially known as the Czech Republic should…
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‘A Scandal in Czechia’
Before I disappeared into article-writing land, I put up an item arguing that today’s Czech Republic, homeland of all of…
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People of Czechia, Turn Back! It's Not Too Late
My two sons are each 50% Czech by background. So through the laws of algebraic equivalence, obviously this means that…
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“U's On First?” More on the Wacky 十三五 Video
Yesterday I mentioned a delightfully weird English-language Chinese soft-power / propaganda video, all about “The 十三五 .” As explained earlier, this…
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Today in Chinese Soft-Power Surreality: The 十三五 !
Last night the online China-watcher world was erupting in delight over the video you can watch below. It raises questions…
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters A Headline Worth Study in The New York Times
The man bites dog / dog bites man conundrum applied to story-framing
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Wikimedia Announcer Voice: Unified Field Theory Edition
Why Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra gave America its modern language, and why some preachers are struggling to haul it back into the past.
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Trailer for <em>Best of Enemies</em> film, at SXSW2015 ... Announcer-Speak: The Video Highlights Reel
Clips that mark the progress of America’s weird decades-long linguistic detour
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Wikimedia commons American Announcer-Speak: The Origin Story
Why mid-20th-century American movies, plays, and public speeches were dominated by a dialect that no real American naturally spoke.
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Wikimedia The Rise and Fall of Announcer-Speak, Class War Edition
“A person can't pick up this way of speaking by going to the movies. You have to go to graduate school.” Was the stagey mid-century accent too easy a route to upward social mobility?
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YouTube That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away
Is your language rhotic? How to find out, and whether you should care.
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Wikimedia Language Mystery Redux: Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way?
A particular style of American English once dominated respectable discourse. Now it has entirely disappeared. When? Why? How?
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Fast Times at Ridgemont High, via YouTube The Ass Baton Goes to School
Airhead High: Home of the Stoners
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Wikimedia commons. Build Your Vocabulary, 'Ass Baton' Edition
A Mondegreen moment may be closer than you think.
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Gus Pasquarella/Wikimedia 'Mistakes Were Made'
Those were not General Custer's last words at the Little Big Horn. But if he were a modern politician, they probably would have been.
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GreatFirewallOfChina.org The Under-Appreciated Genius of Mark Zuckerberg in China
"Facebook is blocked in China, but Chinese media and social media was aflame with the story of the multi-billionaire founder of Facebook who speaks Chinese!"
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James Fallows 'A Foreigner Speaking Chinese—That's Scary!'
Finale on the Zuckerberg-in-China saga
