[msb-alumni] Geoffrey Nunberg, 75, Expert on How Language Works
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2020 16:01:39 -0400
BlankAll of the books mentioned in this article are available on Bookshare:
"Going
Nuculear"
Synopsis
The words that echo through Geoffrey Nunberg's brilliant new journey across the
landscape of American language evoke exactly the tenor of our times. Nunberg
has a
wonderful ear for the new, the comic and the absurd. He pronounces that:
"'Blog' is a
syllable whose time has come," and that "You don't get to be a verb unless
you're
doing something right," with which he launches into the effect of Google on our
collective consciousness. Nunberg hears the shifting use of "Gallic" as we
suddenly
find ourselves in bitter opposition to the French; perhaps only Nunberg could
compare
America the Beautiful with a Syrian national anthem that contains the line "A
land
resplendent with brilliant suns...almost like a sky centipede." At the heart of
the
entertainment and linguistic slapstick that Nunberg delights in are the core
concerns
that have occupied American minds. "Going Nucular," the title piece, is more
than a
bit of fun at the President's expense. Nunberg's analysis is as succinct a
summary of
the questions that hover over the administration's strategy as any political
insider's. It exemplifies the message of the book: that in the smallest ticks
and
cues of language the most important issue and thoughts of our times can be
heard and
understood. If you know how to listen for them. Nunberg has dazzling receptors,
perfect acoustics and a deftly elegant style to relay his wit and wisdom.
_____
Geoffrey Nunberg, 75, Expert on How Language Works. By Richard Sandomir.
A widely respected linguist, he found popularity beyond academia with
appearances on
NPR and books like the intriguingly titled "'Going Nucular."
Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist whose elegant essays and books explained to a
general
audience how English has adapted to changes in politics, popular culture and
technology, died on Aug. 11 at his home in San Francisco. He was 75. Kathleen
Miller, his wife, said the cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.
Mr. Nunberg's fascination with the way people communicate found expression in
acclaimed books like "Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in
Confrontational Times" (2001); in scholarly work in areas like the relationship
between written and spoken language; and in lexicography -- he was chairman of
the
usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He was one of a small group of
linguists, among them Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, renowned beyond their
academic
universes.
"I always saw him as the paragon of public intellectualism," the linguist Ben
Zimmer,
who writes a column on language for The Wall Street Journal, wrote in an email.
"He
was a lucid, effective communicator about thorny linguistic issues for many
decades."
Mr. Nunberg addressed many of those subjects as a regular commentator on "Fresh
Air,"
the NPR talk show hosted by Terry Gross. Starting in 1987, he delivered erudite
essays that explored words like 'disinformation,' 'disruption' and 'selfie';
phrases
like "tell it like it is" and "the deep state"; and broader subjects like the
way
millennials speak.
In a "Fresh Air" commentary last year on the gender-neutral pronouns used by
nonbinary people, he urged speakers to "tweak your internal grammar" to refer
to an
individual as 'they. 'It takes some practice to get the hang of it,' he said,
"but
the human language processing capacity is more adaptable than people realize,
even
for geezers like me. As I read through an article about a nonbinary person who
uses
"they," "them" and "their," the pronouns ultimately sort themselves out."
In another NPR essay, he observed that the word "socialism" has survived as a
term of
abuse used against Democrats by Republicans, but has lately lost some of its
political zip because "the connections to Marxism are hard to discern" and its
power
to slander has diminished. "Conservatives often seem to assign magical powers
to that
word -- call yourself a socialist and you summon the specter of Stalin whether
you
meant to or not," he said. "You think you're calling for guaranteed health
care, but
you're really calling for gulags and collectivization."
In a reminiscence on NPR last week, Ms. Gross recalled that Mr. Nunberg was
interested in how young people "create new words and give old words new
meanings,"
but not in "scolding people for not following the rules of grammar."
Geoffrey David Nunberg was born on June 1, 1945, in Manhattan and grew up in
Scarsdale, N.Y. His mother, Sally (Sault) Nunberg, was a teacher, and his
father,
Jacob Nunberg, was a commercial real estate broker. His parents raised him and
his
sister with an 'exaggerated concern' for language, he told Stanford magazine in
2005.
The poet Ogden Nash's light verse and unconventional rhymes delighted him.
Still, he took a circuitous route to a linguistics career. He studied pre-law
at
Columbia College in the early 1960s but left to explore drawing at the Art
Students
League of New York. His pursuit of art did not last long and he returned to
Columbia,
where a course on linguistics hooked him. After earning his bachelor's degree,
he
received a master's in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972
and a
Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1978.
He quickly began teaching, first at the University of Rome and then at the
University
of California, Los Angeles, and at Stanford University, where he was a
professor from
1988 to 2004. During that time he was also a research scientist at a think
tank, the
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. In 2005 he joined the University of
California,
Berkeley, where he taught in the School of Information.
His scholarly work covered a broad range of subjects, including semantics and
pragmatics -- the context in which language is used -- as well as information
access,
language policy, multilingualism and the cultural implications of digital
technology.
"He was very interested in the nature of written language and its relationship
to
spoken language, and his work on that has been very influential," Mark
Liberman, a
professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a phone
interview. Professor Liberman noted that although spoken language developed
before it
was written, "Geoff's contribution was pointing out that in every tradition,
written
language has its own principles, its own rules and its own patterns that aren't
just
ways of encoding spoken language."
The rigor that characterized Mr. Nunberg's academic research also fueled his
writing
and commentary on popular subjects.
In the title essay of "Going Nucular," he pondered why President George W. Bush
pronounced 'nuclear' that way. He suggested that Mr. Bush knew the right
pronunciation (perhaps having learned it from his father, President George
Bush) but
had picked up the wrong one from "Pentagon wiseguys" or used it as a "faux
bubba
thing" to tweak the "Eastern dweebs" he had known when he attended Phillips
Academy
and Yale.
In "Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years" (2012), Mr. Nunberg
analyzed the history and use of a word that turns funny, nasty or provocative
when it
is applied to someone's character rather than someone's body. It is, he wrote,
"a
word we reserve for members of our own tribe: the boss who takes credit for
your
work, the neighbors who get on your case for putting out your garbage the night
before, or maybe a well-known politician or celebrity."
His other books include three collections, "The Way We Talk Now" (2001), "The
Years
of Talking Dangerously" (2009), and "Talking Right" (2006), about the way
Republicans
and conservatives have transformed political language.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Nunberg is survived by his sister, Barbara
Nunberg, and
his daughter, Sophie Nunberg. His marriage to Anne Fougeron ended in divorce.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Nunberg turned his linguistic focus to the long debate
over
the use of Redskins as the name for Washington's National Football League team.
He
testified on behalf of a group of Native Americans to the Trademark Trial and
Appeal
Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, bringing evidence that
the
name was disparaging.
"You can say you don't mean it as a slur," he told The Northwest Herald of
Woodstock,
Ill., in 2001. "But that doesn't change the meaning of the word."
Although the board canceled the trademarks covering the Redskins name, a
federal
judge reinstated them in 2003. The case ended in 2017, when the Supreme Court
ruled
that potentially disparaging trademarks are protected by the First Amendment.
Last
month, however, the team dropped the name under pressure from sponsors.
"Geoff was ahead of his time on the Redskins issue," Mr. Zimmer said. 'I'm glad
he
lived long enough to see the Redskins name fall by the wayside, even if it
didn't
happen in the courts."
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