Grandmothers have the best curse words
two highlights: we hold swear words in a different part of the brain than the rest of language. We often don’t think of the literal meaning of common swear words…
Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…
Allusionist 58: Eclipse
It's August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She's in a bar, standing onstage,…
Allusionist 54: The Authority
Sometimes you want to make the dictionary sexy, but it's just not a sexy thing