Geoffrey Nunberg, GOING NUCULAR

Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford's Center for the  Study of Language and Information is the author of a new book Going Nucular, which needless to say is a reference to the `pronunciation used by President Bush, deliberately according to Nunberg, who  follows the example set by George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" (1950).  He reads the press and above all he listens to TV to catch the mannerisms used by politicians and commentators, often with the purpose of fudging the truth. He discusses the metamorphosis in the US  of the word "liberal", which has here acquired a quite different meaning from what it has in Europe. The word "Caucasian" has changed meaning according to the racial politics of the day.  In fact, the word goes back to the German anthropologist Johannes Blumenbac,h who invented it in 1795 under the impression that the Aryan "race" came from the Caucasus,  We have discussed the use of the word "Aryan" in connection with Persia/Iran.  This brings up the whole history of anthropology, which is still in a state of flux. Arguments about it were presumably responsible for the splitting of Stanford's Anthropology into two.  Whenever anyone makes a statement about anthropology, regard it as tentative. Treat with the same doubt  the assertions of politicians and commentators, learning from Geoffrey Nunberg to catch the overtones or undertones of the words they use.

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