the politics of language or, the language of politics

Once again I bring you the insight of Geoff Nunberg:

A Date to Remember

Last fall for an anthropology paper I read a book entitled Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times by linguist Geoffrey Nunberg. The book is a series of short essays about language and is a really fun read. Under the section SYMBOLS is an essay about how we talk about/represent/symbolize important historical events and why. He mentions 9/11 and I thought today would be a good day to share it.
Nunberg is insightful, clever and quite entertaining. I highly recommend this book and it's fairly inexpensive on Amazon. You'll probably hear more about Nunberg from me as the semester progresses so I thought this would be a good place to start. Click on the pages to view them full size.