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You might be wondering why young people are calling each other a type of women’s underwear.But “brah,” is really a version of “bro,” a term with which… -
Metaphorical language is powerful.We use it to make the unfamiliar familiar and to make us see the familiar in a different light.A reporter may speak of…
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The term “dog whistle” pops up in politics with much higher frequency these days.A literal dog whistle is a whistle that emits sounds at a pitch beyond… -
When an American uses the term “witch hunt,” a few inter-related referents come to mind.The first of these is to the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials of… -
You can’t avoid the word “pumpkin” this time of year, even if you’re the sort of person who avoids pumpkin flavors or pumpkins themselves.“Pumpkin” is a… -
Those who do search engine optimization for a living contend that the hashtag is not all that useful, since few people actually use them to search for the… -
Recent debate over removing Confederate statuary from public spaces illuminates the intersection of words and other forms of expression.The civil rights… -
It has always bothered me that grant proposals always require “narratives.”Grant narratives are generally so highly structured that they could not… -
When Wichita State University’s Education Department recently changed its name to the College of Applied Studies, it may have aligned them with university… -
I ran across a phrase online the other day that I hadn’t seen in a while: “What, U mad?” with the letter “U” substituted for the word spelled “y-o-u.”I… -
Those of us who work for someone other than ourselves become so used to “performance reviews” that we seldom stop to consider what they mean.Though… -
“Our most vulnerable” is a term we use to transfer an audience’s pity from others and onto whoever isusing the term.Consider its use: when we label groups…
