Quotes by Geoffrey Nunberg

“The choice of words is important when things like this happen,”

“Language doesnt so much cause divisions as it symbolizes them. I dont think using evacuee or refugee will change peoples minds, but it will signal differences about how we think about class that has always been there.”

“Everybody is using the V word now. Basically, its become a way of saying our values are All-American, and you dont have any ... It will certainly appear at the [Republican] convention because Bush is not going to let go of the values issue.”

“[Only in the plural is a woman likely to be called a guy .] You can say, Call Mary and Jane and see if those guys want to come to dinner tonight, ... but you cant say, I wanted to invite Alice, but the guy wasnt answering her calls. This usage may be related to the tendency to use guy as a kind of perky pseudo-pronoun - nowadays you hear people using a phrase like those guys to refer to everything from ski boots to PowerPoint slides.”

“[Only in the plural is a woman likely to be called a guy.] You can say, Call Mary and Jane and see if those guys want to come to dinner tonight, ... but you cant say, I wanted to invite Alice, but the guy wasnt answering her calls. This usage may be related to the tendency to use guy as a kind of perky pseudo-pronoun - nowadays you hear people using a phrase like those guys to refer to everything from ski boots to PowerPoint slides.”

“Click here for cool stuff.”

“These technologies are interesting in the same way that a shoe can also be a hammer. There are incidental uses for cell phones that often can be something that changes it altogether.”

“Cell phone makes those boundaries between public and private very porous. In the past, if youre having a spat with a significant other in a public place, one of you will argue and say, Not here because its intrusive. But now, with cell phones, theres no Not here anymore.”

Its not odd these days to hear politicians trumpeting their own authenticity, a claim that an earlier day would have considered self-cancelling. But when Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum say Im authentic, theyre not evoking the shade of Neal Cassady. (102)