John McWhorter on Muck Rack

John McWhorter

New Jersey
As seen in: Lexicon Valley, The New York Times, Apple Podcasts, CNN, MSN, The New York Times en Español, Estadão, Forbes, HuffPost, The Washington Post, TIME, Aol and
Columbia linguist, weekly at NYT, biweekly Lexicon Valley podcast and Glenn Show. 9 NASTY WORDS and WOKE RACISM in 2022. Later this year: PRONOUN TROUBLE!
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Articles

Euphemism Won’t Save Young Black Men’s Lives

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By John McWhorter
| The New York Times Verified
The Fourth of July weekend was “marked by dozens of US deaths from gun violence,” according to The Guardian. A few weekends ago, there were 27 shootings in Chicago, with eight fatalities. This set folks scratching their chins about “gun violence prevention.” The term is now so common it’s easy to miss how strained it is. “Gun violence” sounds as if guns are committing the violence. The expression artfully excises from the equation the actual person doing this “violence” — the shooter.
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See the Music, Hear the Sights

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By John McWhorter
| The New York Times Verified
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. At a glorious concert about America’s past, I think I found some implications for the future of classical music in America. The performance was of “A Hundred Years On,” an oratorio by the composer Peter Boyer and the librettist Mark Campbell celebrating the Centennial Exposition of 1876, America’s first grand fair.
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The British Used to Sound Like We Did Original

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By John McWhorter
| The New York Times Verified
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. If we traveled in time to America at its founding, we would be as thrown by how people sounded as by the absence of electricity, highways and bottled water. And realizing how the way we speak has changed since then gives us a clue to how Americans might speak in the future.
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