Perseus Academic: Talking Right by Geoffrey Nunberg

Talking Right is Geoffrey Nunberg’s fierce and funny narrative of how the political right has ushered in a new linguistic order, aided unwittingly by the liberal media. While Democrats wade through wonky locutions like “social security lockbox,” and “single payer,” the right has become harder, meaner, and better at claiming words like “values,” “government,” “faith,” and “freedom” for its own. In effect, conservatives have shifted the political center of gravity of the language itself to the right. “Whatever our politics,” Nunberg observes, “when we talk about politics nowadays, we can’t help using language that embodies a conservative worldview.” This new paperback edition of Talking Right, featuring a step-back cover and a new introduction by the author, will be catnip to political junkies as the presidential election campaign rhetoric heats up.

Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist who teaches at the Berkeley School of Information. He is chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Since 1989, he has done a language feature on NPR's Fresh Air, and his commentaries on language and politics are regularly seen in the Sunday New York Times and other publications. A winner of the Linguistic Society of America's Language and the Public Interest Award, he is also the author of The Way We Talk Now and Going Nucular. Nunberg lives in San Francisco, California.