From the San Francisco Chronicle
Geoffrey Nunberg: language of the right
By Justin Berton
It was a dark day for linguists when George W. Bush left office.
"It was like being a sportswriter," says Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist who teaches at UC Berkeley's School of Information, "and not having George Steinbrenner around."
Nunberg is also author of "The Years of Talking Dangerously," a collection of his essays, columns and NPR reports that chronicle the end of an era: The death of right-wing political speak.
So long "Mission Accomplished" and "You're either with us or against us."
Hello, hope and change....
So where are we now? The Obama administration floats terms like "new foundation" (economy) and "empathy" (federal judges), but it also backs away from the terms when they fail to catch on.
"It's hard to know where we are right now," Nunberg said. "But I'm hoping it gets more linguistically interesting."