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Linguistics
June 10, 2020
John Patrick Leary
Freeing Protest From the Language Police
Cops and media elites have long enforced a demand for peaceful protest, without any regard for what those words mean.
October 23, 2019
MagazineMicah Hauser
Picturing the Future
How a shadowy consortium controls the evolution of emoji
January 31, 2018
Emily Atkin
Trump is the slowest speaker of all recent U.S. presidents.
March 22, 2017
Geoffrey Nunberg
What Trump’s Quotation Marks Really Mean
They reveal the president's insecurity about his profound illiteracy.
December 30, 2015
Laurel Stvan
Why Norwegians Say “Texas” When They Mean “Crazy”
July 28, 2015
Adam Nathaniel Peck
Stop Capitalizing the Word Internet
Dictionaries and style guides treat it as a proper noun, but no one else does
October 3, 2014
Jesse Singal
Steven Pinker: These Are the Grammar Rules You Don't Need to Follow
September 30, 2014
Alice Robb
People Use Fewer First-Person Pronouns As They Get Older
September 21, 2014
Dan Jurafsky
Why Drugs Are a Metaphor for Some Foods, and Sex Is a Metaphor for Others
Exploring the language of Yelp reviews
August 21, 2014
David Crystal
The History of "Sweetie" and 8 Other Old-Fashioned Terms of Endearment
July 7, 2014
Alice Robb
How Using Emoji Makes Us Less Emotional
And what linguists say it means if your smiley face has a nose
May 14, 2014
Alice Robb
Women Get Interrupted More—Even By Other Women
April 25, 2014
Alice Robb
How Two Inoffensive Words Became the Most Inflammatory Phrase in English
The affirmative action story
April 23, 2014
Alice Robb
Multilinguals Have Multiple Personalities
April 17, 2014
Alice Robb
How Capital Letters Became Internet Code for Yelling
And why we should lay off the all-caps key
January 27, 2014
Alice Robb
The Science of Explaining Heads or Tails
Psychologists know which one you'll call
December 27, 2013
Alice Robb
Cognitive Neuroscientists Find That People Think of Pain When They Hear Champagne
December 19, 2013
John McWhorter
This American Dictionary Is Full of Words You've Never Heard Before
An ambitious attempt to document the differences in regional English
May 17, 2013
John McWhorter
Freedom From, Freedom To
Yes, you can end a sentence in a preposition
April 30, 2013
John McWhorter
The Royal They
Fighting against the tyranny of pronouns

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