Words like ”dude,” “man,” “bro,” and “brah” are popular and powerful signals of solidarity, writes Valerie Fridland.

Ever tried selling a car called “Corpse by Fisher” in Flanders? Or marketing a soda that “brings ancestors back from the grave” in Taiwan? These stories show us that words are very important in global ...

Stories about the campus language police are a staple of the conservative-leaning press. There, you’ll read about a University of Washington language guide created by the campus’s information ...

AT THE paediatrician’s clinic, a nurse told Viorica Marian, a native speaker of Romanian, to use only English with her US-born daughter. Speaking another language would “confuse” the child and hurt ...

“Ohio.” “Brat.” “Cringe.” “Weird.” Coconut emojis. Viral memes are omnipresent this campaign season, distilling concepts, images and ideas into simple, replicable formats that spread rapidly online.

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” observed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. We might ask, accordingly, how does language shape reality, arbitrating human experience of ...

The contents of this article are a pragmatic, simplified, and adapted version of John Austin’s (1962) work on speech act theory (SAT), first presented at Oxford University between 1951 and 1954 and at ...