John McWhorter
-
![]()
Sebastian Scheiner / AP The Coronavirus Generation Will Use Language Differently
Being out of school for half a year could change children’s relationship with formal expression.
-
![]()
Alex Brandon / AP The Surgeon General Meets the Language Police
Jerome Adams acknowledged the vulnerability of people of color—but ran afoul of a powerful ideology.
-
![]()
Yana Paskova / Getty Images Bloomberg Flunks the Wokeness Test
Stop-and-frisk was awful. But to disqualify the former New York mayor from the presidency on that basis is to risk something more destructive: a second term for Trump.
-
![]()
Bryan Woolston / Reuters Troops Is an Unethical Euphemism
A soldier is a person. A troop is something from the game of Risk.
-
![]()
Carlo Allegri / Reuters Why Latinx Can’t Catch On
New words stick when they come from below, and respond to a real need.
-
![]()
Scott Morgan / Reuters The Woke Attack on Pete Buttigieg
In The Root, Michael Harriot misreads the presidential candidate’s old comments on role models.
-
![]()
Andrea Comas / Reuters The Show-Trial Rhetoric That Took Down a Charter-School Founder
A petition accusing Steven Wilson of “white supremacist” language makes no sense, and barely tries to.
-
![]()
Carlo Allegri / Reuters Don’t Use the Word Emolument
It’s outdated. Why not use plain language instead?
-
![]()
Erin Scott / Reuters Trump’s a Liddle’ Scary
The president’s linguistic life is as oral as that of a medieval artisan.
-
![]()
Jose Luis Gonzalez / Reuters The F-Word Is Going the Way of Hell
In today’s world, slurs are the real profanity, not the use of an “F-bomb” to describe a mass shooting.
-
![]()
Associated Press The Idea That Whites Can’t Refer to the N-Word
It’s long been accepted that the slur shouldn’t be used by white people to refer to black people. What about referring to the word itself?
-
![]()
Brian Snyder / Reuters What Joe Biden’s Latest Gaffe Reveals
He equated being poor with being a person of color. But many people share that sociological assumption.
-
![]()
Carlos Barria / Reuters Racist Is a Tough Little Word
The definition has grown and shifted over time.
-
![]()
Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress via ... The Origins of the ‘Acting White’ Charge
School integration yielded a disturbing by-product: a psychological association between scholastic achievement and whiteness.
-
![]()
Leah Millis / Reuters AOC’s Critics Are Pretending Not to Know How Language Works
A great deal of communication is based on metaphor.
-
![]()
Associated Press The Astonishing Rise of Existential Threats
Have 2020 candidates been reading too much French philosophy?
-
![]()
Isabel Pavia / Getty How I Taught My Kid to Read
Children can learn quickly by sounding out words, letter by letter—but somehow, the method is still controversial.
-
![]()
Jessica B. Kirk / Shutterstock Don’t Scrap the Test, Help Black Kids Ace It
Commentary on New York’s elite high schools has focused wrongly on access over preparation.
-
![]()
Tamara Shopsin Why Grown-Ups Keep Talking Like Little Kids
Embracing your inner child is comforting and fun—and just might revitalize the English language.
-
![]()
Lucas Jackson / Reuters It Wasn’t ‘Verbal Blackface.’ AOC Was Code-Switching.
Her critics are misreading the linguistic reality of America’s big cities.
/media/img/2019/04/DIS_Language_McWhorter_01/original.png)
