Tag: language

Essay

Collins’ Word of the Year and What It Says About “The Culture”

It might come as a surprise to anyone living under a rock (a.k.a. those with more “pressing” matters in their lives besides pop culture) that “brat” has been deemed the word of the year by Collins English Dictionary. While some snobs might be quick to point out that it’s not like the Oxford English Dictionary declared this, the news of brat’s status as the word … Continue reading Collins’ Word of the Year and What It Says About “The Culture”

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Essay

A Serious Actor By Any Other Name: On the (Perhaps Erstwhile) Power of Language and the Branding of the Brat Pack in a Pre-Branding World

It’s almost impossible to fathom, in the current “content mill,” clickbait-centric climate, a magazine writer’s words having the kind of impact on the cultural lexicon that could span across decades and continue to endure. And yet, that’s precisely what David Blum managed to do in June of 1985 when arbitrarily coining the phrase “Brat Pack” on the cover of New York magazine. From the moment … Continue reading A Serious Actor By Any Other Name: On the (Perhaps Erstwhile) Power of Language and the Branding of the Brat Pack in a Pre-Branding World

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Poetry

Toward a Hermeneutics of Language in Which Poetry is Mistaken for Violets by Ann Pedone

This is the trouble with language.It moves with borrowed light. Lingersbetween loverssky and birda woman’s body and your mouth. It is a thing that grows as the light moves.Follows the revolutionsof the sun.Is consumed by the appetites of the soil. I list all of the men I have loved. Those who have left me and all the rest. And as I collapse into a sleep that is notI reachfor your shoulderas you moveto your side … Continue reading Toward a Hermeneutics of Language in Which Poetry is Mistaken for Violets by Ann Pedone

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Criticism

Per Orwell’s Warning, Language Continues to be Rendered Meaningless as Evidenced by the Meeting of the “Minds” at the Oval Office

Perhaps even more eerily accurate and increasingly prescient with the passage of time than George Orwell’s 1984 is his essay entitled “Politics and the English Language.” As only Orwell, in all his deftness, could describe the core of the problem of how we wield language, he commences the thesis as follows: Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English … Continue reading Per Orwell’s Warning, Language Continues to be Rendered Meaningless as Evidenced by the Meeting of the “Minds” at the Oval Office

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