Summary: Geoffrey Nunberg, author of "Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years", explores how words like "incivility" don't do justice to peoples' actual emotions. Nunberg argues that words like "asshole" are more accurate, authentic methods of expression. Complete video available for purchase at http://fora.tv/2012/08/15/Nunberg_Ascent_of_the_A-word_Incivility_vs_A--hole It went from the mouths of WWII servicemen to the typewriter of a young Norman Mailer. By the 1970s it had become a staple of Neil Simon plays and Woody Allen movies. In 2000, George W. Bush accidentally uttered it on a live mic and sparked a debate about whether that made him a man of the people, or just an a--hole. Ours is the age of a--holism. Over time, the word has become an expression of contemporary American values – about civility, about relationships, about pretension, about class. Yet the media are obliged to bleep it or disguise it with asterisks. And we use it unreflectingly and give it no attention. Geoffrey Nunberg takes us behind the slur. Geoffrey Nunberg is an adjunct full professor at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information. He is also a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and a consulting professor in the Stanford Department of Linguistics. His linguistics research includes work in semantics and pragmatics, text classification, and written-language structure, and he also works and writes on the social and cultural implications of digital technologies.
