If you logged onto MyAccess not too long ago, you were prompted to fill out a survey that contained two short questions, one about your “ethnicity” and one about your “race.” According to an email we received from the Registrar in March, the US Department of Education required this survey, which used a “newly prescribed format.” The two questions were as follows:

(1) Ethnicity: Hispanic or Latino; Not Hispanic or Latino
(2) Race: American Indian or Alaska native; Asian; Black or African American; Native hawaiian or Other Pacific islander; White

Read Full Post

Spread the Word to End the Word flyer

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel created a stir back in February when it was reported that the foul-mouthed politician had referred to certain political activists as “fucking retarded.” Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin called for Emanuel’s resignation over the offensive outburst, and not because he said the f-word; Palin, whose son has Down’s syndrome, claimed to be offended by his use of the r-word.

It was around this time that I began to notice flyers posted on campus: large capital R’s crossed out in bright colored paint. It turns out that these are part of the Spread the Word to End the Word, a campaign that pledges to “eliminate the use of the R-word in everyday speech.”

Special Olympics spokeswoman Kristen Seckler commented, “We aren’t trying to ban a word, but the pejorative in casual use–especially used by kids in schools and in the classroom–is isolating and it hurts.” The movement seems to be gaining support; as of today, there are 123,878 pledges on r-word.org.

Read Full Post

“So many huge celebs stanning for Pink, they must know better who has the talent.”

“It doesn’t matter who has more stans or celebrity stans, they’re all putting work into performing, recording, and pleasing their fans.”

Who is Stan? And why has his name become a noun and a verb?

Stan, as it turns out, was a man who adored Eminem to the point of insanity, obsessively writing fan letters to the Grammy-award-winning American rapper, record producer, and songwriter. But when Eminem failed to respond to the letters, Stan became crazed, eventually driving himself–and his pregnant girlfriend–off a bridge. Soon after, sitting down to answer some fan mail, the prolific rapper realized that if he had responded to the letters only a week earlier, he would have prevented the sensational suicide that was blaring on every news station.
Read Full Post

My family is hosting a couple of our Turkish friends during Thanksgiving. This has given my father ample opportunity for verbal witticism, such as “Since you are from Turkey, will you be bringing the turkey?” Bad puns aside, how did it happen that the country and the bird share the same name?

Read Full Post

Wordle is a nifty java applet that lets you make neat designs out of any text or webpage. The above is what I got when I plugged in the Indy blog (click to make it larger).

An Amazonian language brings Noam Chomsky’s theories about universal language into question: In my estimation, this is one of the more intriguing and dramatic academic debates in recent history. The Guardian recently published this overview, and the New Yorker published a longer article a couple of years ago, which you can still read here.

Wordlustitude collects and defines actual Internet nonce-words. Recent entries include  “dunderdoof” and “Paula Abdul-usional.” The citations (both real and made-up) are hilarious. This site is funny even if you are not a linguistics geek.

Look under the cut for more linkage…

Read Full Post

Prejudice comes from Latin prefix præ-, meaning “before,” and judicium, “judgement” —in other words, a prejudice is a “pre-judgment,” a conclusion reached prior to rational reflection. The word and the attitude it signifies have always had a bad rap; only the most ignorant reactionaries are prejudiced, never ourselves. If we do recognize our own prejudices, we view these as unavoidable vices to be eclipsed in any way possible. But I think it is time to set the record straight, because prejudices are neither inherently bad nor unnatural. We need to address this prejudice against prejudice.

Read Full Post