Geoffrey Nunberg

The 2006 award season is drawing to a close and linguist Geoff Nunberg gets in just under the wire with the announcement of the first annual Becky award, bestowed by a group of linguists.

The end of the year brings with it "word of the year" designations from professional societies and dictionaries. Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers some of the words that made headlines this past year, including some newsmaking racial epithets.

The election results didn't just reshuffle the Congress -- they also got people debating the meanings of the labels people use to map out the political spectrum. Our linguist Geoff Nunberg has been thinking about what's in a label.

Geoff Nunberg discusses the difference between progressives and liberals.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg considers how we talk about torture.

How do you draw the line between dramatic license and historical accuracy? That was the essence of the controversy over the recent ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11, just as it was a few years ago with the CBS miniseries that put words in Ronald Reagan's mouth that he never uttered. Docudrama may be a new word, but it raises old questions about truth and fiction.

Our linguist Geoff Nunberg doesn’t profess to know much about astronomy. But when astronomers changed the definition of the word planet, they entered his territory — language.

The word lifestyle has moved around in our culture since it first appeared more than 35 years ago. Our linguist says the word has gone from being a way to differentiate the '60s counterculture to a marketing tool and now to a political catchphrase.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on the outrageous nature of political talk shows. He uses Ann Coulter's remarks describing Sept. 11 widows as witches to illustrate his point.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg comments on the recent controversy surrounding the Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."