Wed August 29, 2012 A Linguist's Serious Take On 'The A-Word'
Originally published on Tue September 4, 2012 11:04 am 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 he believes crude words are wonderfully revealing.
Though people tend to think "they're just these bubblings-up of
emotional steam," he says, "they have — it turns out — precise
meanings. And for that very reason, they reflect our genuine
attitudes, rather than what we think our attitudes should be."
Interested in the phenomenon of incivility, Nunberg wanted to
study the word "asshole," and quickly discovered that it was
connected to a wide range of changes in American culture in the
1960s and 1970s, including feminism, self-discovery movements
and changing notions