We know that words change all the time and over time, a process language experts describe as “semantic shift,” semantics being the field of language concerned with meaning. Even if we may not ...

A sentence must never be interpreted out of context, as any scholar knows. It is pointless, furthermore, to suggest that separate sentences are true out of a context of linguistic and nonlinguistic ...

There is no question that my love of language is an inherited trait. My father was a lay linguist, in addition to being a teacher, writer, and public intellectual. In the last few years of his life, ...

Much has been said about the remarkable ability humans have to extract meaning from language. That ability is remarkable indeed. In a split second, we perceive a spoken or written word and immediately ...

The death of Joan Didion, the most profound essayist about language since George Orwell, comes at a time when one of her most astute observations — that words have meaning and consequences — is being ...

Traditionally the relation between philosophy and religion has been one either of identity, as in the early Middle Ages, or of hostility, as in the Age of Reason. In the eighteenth and nineteenth ...

When it comes to protest culture at UC Berkeley, I find myself playing the part of a fair-weather friend. I can only engage for so long until my emotions become numb, the chants lose their meaning and ...