Word: linguists
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Guiding Principle. A noted expert in personnel and industrial relations, Johnson, 47, has earned rare trust during his three years as president. Even his severest critics respect him deeply. Says Linguist Noam Chomsky, the fervent antiwar leader: "He's an honest, honorable man." One reason Johnson inspires confidence is that he combines high energy with a low-key manner. "He's open-minded, unflappable, and doesn't get hooked on a single idea," says Provost Jerome Wiesner. Johnson, for example, laid down no rigid contingency plans for the demonstrations. His guiding principle, he says, was to stay...
...larger scale, though, the persistent growth of euphemism in a language represents a danger to thought and action, since its fundamental intent is to deceive. As Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf has pointed out, the structure of a given language determines, in part, how the society that speaks it views reality. If "substandard housing" makes rotting slums appear more livable or inevitable to some people, then their view of American cities has been distorted and their ability to assess the significance of poverty has been reduced. Perhaps the most chilling example of euphemism's destructive power took place in Hitler...
...into a condition, like humidity or mass, that can be safely measured from a distance. To call someone "poor," in the modern way of thinking, is to speak pejoratively of his condition, while the substitution of "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged," indicates that poverty wasn't his fault. Indeed, writes Linguist Mario Pei in a new book called Words in Sheep's Clothing (Hawthorn; $6.95), by using "underprivileged," we are "made to feel that it is all our fault." The modern reluctance to judge makes it more offensive than ever before to call a man a liar; thus there...
Alienation has been the intellectual's occupational disease throughout history, the assumption being that he must be a critic of society and established values. Says M.I.T. Linguist Noam Chomsky: "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies." Unfortunately, human affairs often yield a multiplicity of truths, a fact that some intellectuals find hard to tolerate. In her book, Vietnam, Mary McCarthy made a strong case for U.S. withdrawal, but she rejected any obligation to suggest how it might be achieved. The fate of the Vietnamese whose lives depend on U.S. protection-well, such human...
...Linguist Stewart's eyes, this modest and unplanned experiment is one more proof of a challenging and controversial thesis put forward by a small and informal coterie of investigators who call themselves "the Cultural Mafia." Afro-American culture, they contend, is not a poor imitation of its white American counterpart but a fully developed life-style of its own. By their reasoning, the origin of the little girl's reading trouble is really simple: compared with her customary ghetto speech, standard English is virtually a foreign language...