Have You Heard of ‘Dutch Reach’? On Collision and Derision in Language
via GIPHY I learned about the Dutch reach, a safety measure to avoid opening your car door into passing bicyclists, the same morning my husband received a Munich apology from a cyclist he accidentally...
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Is Donald Trump the Andrew Jackson of Our Time?
Donald Trump has a unique way of speaking and writing. But for a president his language is not unprecedented. Or not unpresidented. In 2004, after considering the speech of all 42 different presidents...
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Where Do We Begin? Language Learning and Grammar
This fall, I am not only teaching in Paris but temporarily directing a program of study abroad. Among the many other changes this shift has produced in my daily life, I find myself no longer on the...
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In Which I Make Like a Regular William Safire
Allan Sherman For reasons not relevant to this post, someone in a recent online discussion brought up a line by Allan (“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”) Sherman, the bard of Jewish postwar suburban life....
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It’s the Job-Interview Season Again
It’s about that time of the academic year when eager young Ph.D.s and A.B.D.s spend more than they can afford to attend the annual meetings of their disciplines with the goal of landing a job for the...
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The Dreaded Ph.D. Oral Exam
A topic sometimes discussed in the faculty lounge is the dreaded Ph.D. oral exam. As a faculty member who has chaired and otherwise participated in many of these events, I’m tempted to think that I’ve...
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What Gets Covered in ‘Coverage’?
Lloyd’s in the early 19th century (above). The insurance business has been around longer than the word “coverage.” Curricular conversations nationwide lament, cheer, and debate the decline of...
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George H.W. Bush, Language Guy
Reading and listening to coverage of the death of George Bush, my thoughts turned, naturally, to his use of language. Most notably, for a one-term president, he was responsible for (I would say) far...
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Notebook Dump
A redacted document. I recently got an email from my friend Milena Davison in which she commented, “I find myself increasingly annoyed with the use of ‘redact’ and ‘redaction.’ I learned and sometimes...
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[Last Post]
A recent production of “Our Town” at Severance Theater, Anchorage, Alaska If you’ve been a regular reader of this feature of the online Chronicle and have been following the last week of posts, you’ll...
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