Word: farb
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Love You." Being a popularizer of linguistics is no easy task. When he gets to "paralanguage"-the meanings resident in the ways words are voiced -Farb begins to belabor the obvious. Every lover knows that "I love you" is a vocal variable, to be interpreted by the vibrations. In his enthusiasm for "body language"-the things said by facial expressions, gestures, posture -Farb goes far beyond most scholars of the new linguistics. "Pupil performance," he proclaims, "does not depend so much upon a school's audio-visual equipment or new textbooks or enriching trips to museums as it does...
Still, when the theorizing becomes heavy, Farb knows how to entertain himself and his readers with a rich miscellany of random facts and provocative (if not always documented) opinions that spill beyond his outline...
...champion pedants in any language, he says, turn out to be heavy users of slang. Adolescents, applying slang to test "who belongs to the group and who is an intruder," are, Farb contends, "more severe about standards for its correct usage" than the fussiest schoolmarm...
...champion scatologists, he argues, are Germans, who tend to roll in the aisles after the first hint of a comic's outhouse smirk. Is martinet toilet training the explanation? Farb wonders but never decides...
...European investors, the U.S. offers an abundant supply of skilled labor-which is increasingly scarce at home-and an inflation rate that is low by current European standards. Farb-werke Hoechst AG, a West German chemical company, will spend $30 million this year to expand two existing American plants. Britain's Cadbury Schweppes Ltd. broke ground last month on a $10 million chocolate factory in Hazleton...