From Mother Jones
MoJo Interview: Geoffrey Nunberg
The renowned linguist on "torture," "socialism," and why George W. Bush wasn't as inarticulate as you thought.
By Kiera Butler
Mere semantics? Hardly. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg knows words are more powerful than we give them credit for. A professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Nunberg has been a regular contributor to the National Public Radio program Fresh Air since 1988, and he is the author of several books—most recently, The Years of Talking Dangerously, a collection of his commentary from the Bush years. We chatted with Nunberg about the panoply of terms for our financial woes, Obama's task of de-nerding the Democratic discourse, and why Twitter might be the best thing that has ever happened to the English language....