Review: Curzan's The Secret Life of Words

23 April 2015

I’ve been a bit leery of The Great Courses , a line of products that offers downloadable lectures by university professors. The idea combines two things that I have problems with: the whole massive open online course (MOOC) idea and paying for internet content.

MOOCs, or at least the way they’ve been touted as the savior of higher education, are problematic for a lot of reasons, but none of them apply to The Great Courses. One thing that MOOCs are good for is offering course content to those who simply want to learn—an open university. As to the second, I listen to a lot of audio podcasts—when I’m walking the dog or riding the subway into work. And there’s a lot of great audio content that is free (that is offered at no charge by the creator; I’m not talking about pirated stuff), so paying for content seems wasteful. And to one living on a grad student’s stipend, free is important. But it’s not just a personal problem; The Great Courses offerings are expensive, often running $200 or more for a course. 

But when another linguistic podcast that I listen to—Slate’s Lexicon Valley—offered a deep discount on one particular course, I took the plunge, forked over the fifty bucks, and downloaded the course. The course is The Secret Life of Words, by Anne Curzan, a professor of English at the University of Michigan.  I know Curzan by reputation and the course content was right up my alley, so I figured that it couldn’t been too disappointing.

I was not wrong. Curzan’s scholarship is excellent, as I expected. (Actually, I didn’t find a single statement in all her lectures that I would quibble over; that’s a rare feat, as there is almost always some minor fact or opinion that I can disagree with.) Her delivery is also engaging, clearly presenting and explicating complex linguistic concepts in plain language. The focus of the course is the English lexicon and where words come from, although Curzan does delve into other aspects of linguistics as the need arises to explain lexical history. The lectures run the gamut from talking about Old English to modern sports slang. Lecture titles include:

  • Opening the Early English Word-Hoard

  • Chutzpah to Pajamas—Word Borrowings

  • The Tough Stuff of English Spelling

  • I’m Good ... Or Am I Well?

  • Wicked Cool—The Irreverence of Slang

  • Firefighters and Freshpersons

  • #$@%!—Forbidden Words

The course consists of thirty-six half-hour lectures. It’s available in both video and audio-only formats. I purchased the audio-only version, so I can’t say whether or not the video version is worth the extra money, but the course is completely comprehensible in audio-only, and at no point did I feel that I was missing content.

Now I’m still taken aback by the course’s list price of US$199.95 for the audio download ($374.95 for the DVD version). That’s a lot of money. But The Great Courses frequently offers sales and discounts through various outlets, so if you bide your time and watch for special offers, you can get the course for a lot less.

And right now there is a sale on all the language and literature courses, including this one. Until 14 May 2015 you can get audio download of The Secret Life of Words for $49.95.

If you’re reading this website, chances are you’re interested in the English lexicon and its history. That means this course is probably of interest, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Fæhða Gemyndig: Hostile Acts vs. Enmity

3 April 2015

This article of mine was published in the journal Neophilologus in March 2015 (online; print publication date is TBA). It’s behind a paywall, but the copyright conditions allow me to make an earlier draft available, which can be downloaded here.

The topic is pretty esoteric and will probably not be of interest to most of you, but if you’re so inclined to read it, knock yourselves out.

Abstract:

This article systematically examines all sixty-seven instances of the word fǣhþ in the Old English corpus and proposes that instead of the traditional definition of “feud, hostility, enmity,” the word more usually means (1) a specific hostile act or offense, especially homicide, (2) the punishment inflicted for such an offense, or (3) general violence or mayhem. It also examines the lexicographic history of the word and why the traditional definition has lingered despite being problematic. The analysis begins with the word’s use in Anglo-Saxon law codes, where it has a more concrete and precise definition than in poetry and because in poetic works fǣhþ is often used with verbs commonly found in legal usage, such as stǣlan (to accuse, charge with a crime). From the legal codes the analysis moves on to other prose and poetic works, where the word is often used more figuratively, encompassing concepts such as sin—offenses against God—and other unsavory acts. This re-examination of fǣhþ’s meaning usefully checks the impulse to translate it as “feud” in contexts that do not support the idea of perpetual or ongoing hostility, while still allowing translators to deliberately choose to use “feud” or “enmity” where the context justifies it. Recognition that fǣhþ usually means “hostile act” also opens new interpretations of its poetic uses, such as how a connotation of crime affects the view of characters who commit it, the emphasis on injury it introduces, and the legal associations the word brings into the poems.

An End For DARE?

30 March 2015

It seems that the Dictionary of American Regional English is once again on the chopping block. The project narrowly escaped that fate two years ago, but is once again on the brink of ending.

That in a country as wealthy as the United States, that a scholarly project so important, and so relatively inexpensive, as DARE could go without funding is a crime.

The print dictionary has been published, but that ‘s not the end of the project. The web site needs to be maintained and the data, originally collected on paper, needs to be digitized. And then there is the updating for new editions as American English changes.

SCOTUS and the Adverbial "Way"

26 March 2015

Lowering the Bar is one of my favorite blogs. But since it deals primarily with legal humor, I don’t mention it much.

Yesterday, however, Kevin Underhill, the blogger and lawyer, posted a review of the history of the adverbial way in legal opinions. In a recent opinion, Justice Kagan wrote:

Moreover, Omnicare way overstates both the looseness of the inquiry Congress has mandated and the breadth of liability that approach threatens.

Underhill points out that this is not is not the first time Kagan has used the word in a Supreme Court opinion. Back in 2013 she wrote:

Amex has put Italian Colors to this choice: Spend way, way, way more money than your claim is worth, or relinquish your Sherman Act rights.

Lower courts have used way in this fashion since 1998, or 1992 if you count cases where the way was placed in quotation marks. And the OED records it in general usage back as far as 1941.