Podcast #244 : Language vs Reality with Nick Enfield Iona Italia interviews linguistic anthropologist Nick Enfield about why language is good for lawyers and bad for scientists. Quillette 24 Jul 2024 · 37 min read
The Rise of a Mega-Movement We have lost the words that we could once call upon to justify diversity of thoughts, desires, viewpoints, and policy preferences, as opposed to a diversity of demographic groups. Russell Blackford 21 May 2024 · 8 min read
Words Don’t Matter We have power over words, not vice versa. Lawrence M. Krauss 13 Mar 2023 · 6 min read
A Conspiracy Theory of Connotations The obsessive policing of language in the name of progress relies on magical thinking. Oliver Traldi 24 Feb 2023 · 7 min read
The Society of Cultural Anthropology’s Campaign to Present American Populism as Fascism The January 6th riot does make for a visually dramatic backdrop to an exploration of the fascistic strain in modern populist politics. Matthew Porter 5 Aug 2021 · 8 min read
The Incoherence of Gender Ideology To understand the coherence and moral import of transgender rights claims, we must first define what it is that we mean by “transgender.” Michael Robillard 4 Aug 2021 · 21 min read
Rescuing the Radicalized Discourse on Sex and Gender: Part Two of a Three-Part Series Our choice of words affects the way we think. That’s why we spend so much time fighting over which terms to use, whether it’s “undocumented immigrants” versus “illegal aliens,” “foetuses” versus “unborn babies,” or “militants” versus “terrorists.” In recent years, the question of word choice has figured prominently Allan Stratton 27 Jul 2021 · 17 min read
Sorry, Demi Lovato: You Can't Fight Sexism by Opting Out of Womanhood It’s true that hair is a definitive socially-constructed characteristic of femininity (and masculinity) in many cultures. Mary Kate Fain 31 May 2021 · 9 min read
The Misguided Campaign Against Journalistic Objectivity Even historians, who have many years to consider the object of their study, inhabit “the twilight of probability.” How can those journalists tasked with writing “history’s first draft” imagine that they know which way true “harm” lies? Lorraine Clark 1 Oct 2020 · 7 min read
At the NHS and BBC, Important Steps Toward Restoring Balance in the Gender Debate The fierce onslaught she received has served as a wake-up call, even for those who have not been following the debate closely. Julian Vigo 5 Aug 2020 · 10 min read
Publicly Shaming a Musician for Calling a Composition by Its Name The silencing of a voice does not lead to discourse, in art or in politics. Kurt Gottschalk 27 Jun 2019 · 7 min read
How the 'Underground Grammarian' Taught Me to Tell Reason from Rubbish Clear language engenders clear thought, and clear thought is the most important benefit of education. Mark Andre Alexander 10 Jun 2019 · 13 min read
On Its 70th Anniversary, Nineteen Eighty-Four Still Feels Important and Inspiring Nineteen-Eighty Four, whose first publication took place 70 years ago today, is itself a sort of anti-novel, one that undermines its own dramatic tension in a way that might now be described as postmodern. Jonathan Kay 8 Jun 2019 · 15 min read
Tolkien—A Review The real-life Tolkien, who loathed trite allegory, would have cringed. Charlotte Allen 24 May 2019 · 7 min read
Conspiracism at the Atlantic The Atlantic may think that the anti-Shakespeare campaigners offer an entertaining diversion. Its editors certainly failed to pick up the failings of Winkler’s research, yet I believe the issue is a lot more serious than that. Oliver Kamm 16 May 2019 · 10 min read