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In the parlance of Republican-primary politics, “sanctuary” – as in sanctuary city – has become a bad word. In our occasional series we call Word Watch, ABC News political correspondent Jake Tapper and linguist Geoffrey Nunberg explain how a term rooted in religion was turned into an epithet.
Have you ever encountered a rootkit or a lifehack? Do you know what it means to be squicked? These neologisms were all runners-up for the coveted distinction of the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2005 Word of the Year. Erin McKean is the New Oxford editor-in-chief. She explains to Bob, among other things, the difference between an IDP and an IED.
Brooke muses over the word that takes its meaning from a onetime Supreme Court nominee, whose unsuccessful bid for the bench earned him a place in Webster's: to bork.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the National Association of Black Journalists called on media outlets to refer to people fleeing New Orleans as "evacuees," rather than "refugees." Many complied, but others, after consulting their dictionaries and style guides, decided the new term lacked the scope befitting a national catastrophe. Bob examines the debate and discovers that even in the midst of a crisis, language can be critical.
A free forum of ideas suggests a back-and-forth exchange between individuals with various perspectives. But what happens when people are sequestered to separate discursive spaces on the basis of their ideas? As we're seeing all over the Internet these days, debate breaks down, and in its place we find simply a multiplicity of "echo chambers." Brooke talks with University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein about the metaphorical reverberations of the phrase.
This week, we learned that the war on terrorism may soon be a thing of the past. Not that militants are laying down their suicide bombs, or that the U.S. is making peace with its enemies. It's just that the phrase "war on terrorism" is being retired. From now on, it will officially be referred to as the "struggle against violent extremism." Brooke speaks with CIA counterterrorism veteran Michael Scheuer about the semantic overhaul.
Question: What do you call the demographic of American Protestants with especially conservative social beliefs? Answer: Unclear. The group formerly known as the "Christian Right" has made it known that they'd rather be referred to as "Evangelicals." Not so fast, say liberal Evangelicals who vote Democratic, and who protest the tarnishing of their religion with politics. Brooke takes a closer look at a disputed moniker.
There's been a lot of talk recently about the exact definition of "torture." Some say it's an accurate descriptor of what happened to Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody. Others say those detainees were not tortured, but simply "abused," and that "torture" is something out of Saddam's dungeons. In a Newsday op-ed this week, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg mused over the invocation of the word "torture". He joins Bob to discuss the political uses and abuses of language, and his new book, Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times.
