Geoff Nunberg, probably the most prominent politically active linguist after Chomsky, McWhorter and Lakoff (in approximately that order), has a new book about politics and language out. As expected it talks about the right's success in defining liberals and leftists, turning various labels perjorative, inventing scathing stereotypes, and so on.
But on Language Log Nunberg talks a bit about syntax, particularly constructions like "Volvo-driving" and "Latte-drinking", etc.:
The fact is that the right owns those object+present participle compounds, as surely as it owns values, media bias, the lapel-pin flag, and sentences that begin with "See...."
Lexical differences are a dime a dozen. They are easy to make and their use is obvious, but it's always interesting to see syntactic constructions falling along political lines.
Incidentally, I like Nunberg, but I have yet to see him respond publicly to this embarrassing snafu which transpired on Language Log a long time ago. (Be sure to see the response here.) It's probably coincidence, but after this altercation he didn't post on LL for a long time. Until he does respond in some way (maybe he has and I haven't seen it), I must say I can't take him as seriously as I used to.
Posted by Alan Hogue at July 17, 2006 10:27 AM