The Words We Live By

A day of wandering the semantic landscape of Manhattan with an eye out for everyday words: the language of street signs and menus, MetroCards and T-shirts.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

A collage of iPhone photos: “Communication Prosthesis,” showing people whose teeth are bared, at the Museum of Modern Art.

Published: August 3, 2011, New York Times by  DWIGHT GARNER, 

Among the many things to marvel over in “Talk to Me,” a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art about how people and objects communicate, is a device called the “communication prosthesis.” It’s a rigid mouthpiece that stretches the lips wide, exposing the wearer’s teeth and gums. It forces timid people to look as aggressive and unhinged as Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight.”

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  As I stood before this device, it occurred to me that it was, to no small degree, a visual manifestation of the semantic landscape of Manhattan — a place where words are loud, large, strange, tinnitus-inducing, sometimes beautifully vulgar, straining to be heard. Language here has teeth; it seeks you out; it wants a piece of you.

I’m a book critic, a person who evaluates words for a living, and the city, surely, offers its own shifting types of poetry, worth pausing to observe and consider. So on a sunny day in July, I spent a day in Manhattan — along with my two kids, Penn and Harriet — in search of language on a smaller, more fugitive scale. We walked across the city and took subways and cabs, looking at everyday words: the language of street signs and menus, MetroCards and T-shirts. Our close attention was rewarded. This was a movable feast.

Full story here.