Watch Your Language

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

The Dispatch

Politics, News

4.6 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2020

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonah has long awaited the chance to have Columbia University linguist John McWhorter on the show, and now he’s finally here. In a particularly un-rank episode of The Remnant, Jonah asks John about the shifting nature of language, and if it’s really a good thing that usage shifts so rapidly (e.g. “literally”). Also, what grammar police campaigns have been successful in preserving grammatical order, and where have they failed? Show Notes: -John’s many, many books -John’s podcast, Lexicon Valley -Jonah’s piece on Biden’s use of “literally” -Once more, Paul Bloom’s Just Babies -DrinkHydrant.com, use promo code “dingo” for 25% off your first order

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh
0:14.3	Ladies and gentlemen
0:25.5	Greetings new listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Redmond
0:30.0	podcast brought to you by the dispatch and dispatch media go to the
0:37.3	dispatch.com to become a paid member and also perhaps to find out what the
0:42.3	early language of the tower of Babel really was.
0:45.7	So today we have a guest that I've been trying to get on here for a very long
0:48.7	time. I'm as I told him beforehand and I'm very rarely do this. I am a huge fan.
0:54.0	He's a professor of linguistics. I believe comparative literature, Columbia
0:59.7	University, prolific writer. You might have seen him all over the place. He's written
1:05.8	a bunch of really wonderful books. I've read a few of them and with that we'll
1:11.1	just introduce him. John McWorter welcome to the Redmond podcast.
1:14.1	Very nice to be here Jonah. Thanks for having me.
1:17.2	Okay, so I struggle with the you correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say one of
1:27.1	the through lines of a lot of your stuff on linguistics is that words change,
1:33.9	language changes, meaning changes. One need not be I think that the archaic term
1:40.2	is a usagaster, which is a a petty sort of language and usagic cop, which I
1:49.8	will admit from time to time I hypocritically am because I also make up words
1:53.1	all the time. And philosophically I agree with you, right? I mean I think
2:00.2	there's a really highekian strain to a lot of your stuff. Yeah, where where
2:04.1	words and languages are part of a spontaneous order like institutions and
2:08.8	traditions and customs, they are created to solve a problem or serve a need.
	...

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