Geoff Nunberg
Geoff Nunberg is the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
He teaches at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of The Way We Talk Now, Going Nucular, Talking Right and The Years of Talking Dangerously. His most recent book is Ascent of the A-Word. His website is www.geoffreynunberg.com.
-
F. Scott Fitzgerald once declared that using an exclamation point was like laughing at your own joke, but linguist Geoff Nunberg begs to differ. He has begun embracing the mark in his own writing.
-
Many of those quotes we see on Facebook or Instagram are attributed to authors who never said them. Does it matter when we get a quotation wrong? Linguist Geoff Nunberg says, not always.
-
Donald Trump isn't the first politician to use coarse language, but linguist Geoff Nunberg says the 2005 Access Hollywood tape of him discussing women's genitalia wasn't like other live-mic incidents.
-
The media have used a variety of epithets to describe white working-class Trump supporters. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says these terms embody the class contention that is central to this year's election.
-
While some of his colleagues have criticized the current trend of starting sentences with the phrase, "I feel like," linguist Geoff Nunberg says it's just a case of generational misunderstanding.
-
Uber's "God view" shows a map of the cars in an area and the silhouettes of the people who ordered them. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says Uber-Santa doesn't just know when you've been sleeping, but where.
-
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century evokes another famous tome with "capital" in its title, and makes comparisons inevitable.
-
When dictionaries add trendy words like "twerk," they're prioritizing the fleeting language habits of the young, says Geoff Nunberg. And our fascination with novel words tends to eclipse subtle changes in the meanings of old ones — "which are often more consequential," he says.
-
The Republican vice presidential pick wants to take another look at programs like Medicare and Social Security. Fresh Air's resident linguist parses the word "entitlement" in its political and nonpolitical contexts.