John McWhorter
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Erin Scott / Reuters Trump’s a Liddle’ Scary
The president’s linguistic life is as oral as that of a medieval artisan.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Carlos Barria / Reuters Racist Is a Tough Little Word
The definition has grown and shifted over time.
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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.
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Leah Millis / Reuters AOC’s Critics Are Pretending Not to Know How Language Works
A great deal of communication is based on metaphor.
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Associated Press The Astonishing Rise of Existential Threats
Have 2020 candidates been reading too much French philosophy?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Lucas Jackson / Reuters It Wasn’t ‘Verbal Blackface.’ AOC Was Code-Switching.
Her critics are misreading the linguistic reality of America’s big cities.
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AP Freedom Am Won: A Linguistic Mystery
Many of the roots of Black English reach back to the speech of rural white folks in the British Isles.
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Eduardo Munoz / Reuters What the Jussie Smollett Story Reveals
It shows a peculiar aspect of 21st-century America: victimhood chic.
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Aaron Bernstein / Reuters Are All Instances of Blackface Alike?
Perhaps there is a difference between donning it to mock black people and donning it to resemble someone, as Mark Herring did.
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Haraz Ghanbari / AP Could Black English Mean a Prison Sentence?
Court stenographers often misunderstand Black English, and their mistakes could affect people’s lives at crucial junctures.
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AP Why a TV Weatherman Turned MLK’s Name Into a Slur
The incident has been misanalyzed and misjudged—and the Rochester broadcaster should be reinstated.
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Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Trump’s Typos Reveal His Lack of Fitness for the Presidency
They suggest not just inadequate manners or polish, but inadequate thought.
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Scott Olsen / Getty The Virtue Signalers Won’t Change the World
Third-wave anti-racism makes sense, and fits into the longer struggle, but it’s a dead end.
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AP Call Them What They Wants
As more English speakers adopt the singular they and reject the gender binary, resisters will have to accept that language changes over time.
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