Word: linguistics
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...eine Cocktailparty in Munich two years ago, a bookseller complained about the prevalence of Americanisms to Fritz Neske, an author, and his wife Ingeborg, a linguist. The Neskes decided to catalogue the terms that had become common. Their recently published Dictionary of English and American Expressions in German (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 314 pages; $1.85) contains 3.000 of them. Sales of the dictionary have been brisk, even though it has not yet made die Bestsellerliste...
Nature and Culture. Most recently, the mystery has been explored by George B. Milner, a linguist at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In New Society magazine, Milner argues that laughter restores man's balance on his precarious tightrope trip through life. "Man is doomed," he writes, "to be a product of culture, but not to be wholly cultural; and to be a product of nature, but not to be wholly natural." Half civilized, half beast, man struggles endlessly to harmonize the conflicting poles of his being. Pulled too far in either direction, he instinctively recognizes...
...being aggressive, but simply establishing security within its normal sphere of influence. The ruthless, bloody way in which the Soviets imposed their rule is blithely brushed over by the revisionists. Intimations of conspiracy are liberally sprinkled throughout American Power and the New Mandarins by M.I.T.'s linguist-turned-historian Noam Chomsky. He attributes the Viet Nam War to the machinations of amoral technocrats who slavishly serve the repressive U.S. social order...
Guiding Principle. A noted expert in personnel and industrial relations, Johnson, 47, has earned rare trust during his three years as president. Even his severest critics respect him deeply. Says Linguist Noam Chomsky, the fervent antiwar leader: "He's an honest, honorable man." One reason Johnson inspires confidence is that he combines high energy with a low-key manner. "He's open-minded, unflappable, and doesn't get hooked on a single idea," says Provost Jerome Wiesner. Johnson, for example, laid down no rigid contingency plans for the demonstrations. His guiding principle, he says, was to stay...
...into a condition, like humidity or mass, that can be safely measured from a distance. To call someone "poor," in the modern way of thinking, is to speak pejoratively of his condition, while the substitution of "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged," indicates that poverty wasn't his fault. Indeed, writes Linguist Mario Pei in a new book called Words in Sheep's Clothing (Hawthorn; $6.95), by using "underprivileged," we are "made to feel that it is all our fault." The modern reluctance to judge makes it more offensive than ever before to call a man a liar; thus there...