Aug 29, 2012

Geoff Nunberg Discusses His New Book on NPR's Fresh Air

From Fresh Air from WHYY on National Public Radio

A Linguist's Serious Take On 'The A-Word'

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg wants people to take his new book, Ascent of the A-Word, seriously.

"I'd meet people when I was working on the book, and even academics — they'd say, 'What are you working on?' and they'd giggle. Or they'd say, 'You must have a lot of time on your hands,' " Nunberg tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross....

Nunberg says the usage of the word, as not being purely anatomical, originated during World War II as a GI's term for an officer who thinks his status "entitles him to a kind of behavior — to either abuse his men, or makes him more important than he really is." When GIs came home, they brought the word with them, and movement radicals began to use it....

Today, Nunberg says the A-word is used much more frequently, and he blames the Internet.

"We have more opportunities both to behave this way to other people and to use this kind of language," he says.

Nunberg is a linguist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information. He is also Fresh Air's language commentator and has served on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016