Link to the Show / Show NotesAs liberals wade through the semantics of "social security lockbox," and other wonky locutions, the right has become harder, meaner and better at getting out the message: the estate tax became the more menacing "death tax" and a contentious education initiative was wrapped in the comforting blanket of "No Child Left Behind."
In his new book, Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show, Geoffrey Nunberg explains how — by changing the meaning of words — like "values," "government," "liberal"; "faith," and "freedom," conservatives have shifted the political center of gravity of the language itself to the right.
Nunberg is a linguist who teaches at the Berkeley School of Information. He is chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary and also the author of The Way We Talk NowGoing Nucular.
Recorded August 29, 2006
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