Thursday, April 20, 2017

Euphemism Treadmill

Euphemism Treadmill
In this Lexicon Valley podcast, “John McWhorter [talks about] the evolution from ‘crippled’ to ‘handicapped’ to ‘differently abled’ – and why no such term is likely to stick around long.” (audio)

 

‘Most Writers Do Not Love Being On The Side Of Power’ – Elif Batuman On The Trouble With Travel Writing In English

“The writer in the Western literary imagination is an individual observer, an individualist, experiencing and observing the world and its structures from the outside, with some amount of skepticism and humor and empathy. If that’s what you’re trying to do, or to be, it can feel really uncomfortable to realize that, within the story you’re trying to write about, there is an equally real sense in which you are actually also the beneficiary and representative of, an insider of, a world-dominating superpower.”
 

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