This sentence begins the best article you will ever read. Chances are you thought that last statement might be sarcasm. Sarcasm, as linguist Robert Gibbs noted, includes “words used to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning of a sentence.” A form of irony, it also tends to be directed...
Day after day, we’re bombarded with so many media messages that rarely do we stop to think about what they’re telling us to think, do or feel. Much has been written about the unrealistic beauty standards women have been held to. Female actresses, models and TV personalities are overwhelmingly thin, which has had a detrimental...
When Americans hear some pundits projecting a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterm elections, they understand that this is a prediction of a big Democratic victory. Blue of course symbolizes the Democratic party, while red represents the GOP. This might seem like a long-standing tradition, but it isn’t. While writing my forthcoming book “On Color,”...
A student movement against gun violence is receiving sustained news coverage and was instrumental in building momentum around the March For Our Lives Rally Saturday March 24 in Washington D.C. and other U.S. cities. Students are using social and news media to build momentum and advocate for legislation in the wake of a Feb. 14...
Donald Trump’s opponents have long been waiting for some sort of scandal to bring him down, and they may think they have finally found it in pornographic film star Stormy Daniels. Daniels alleges she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump in 2006 and was subsequently paid off by a Trump lawyer to stay silent...
Valentine’s Day tends to make people think about their romantic relationships. Single? Maybe there’s someone you’ve been texting regularly whom you realize you want to ask out on a date. In a relationship? You might start thinking that your current flame is your one and only. But no matter what your relationship status is, if...
For black Americans, skin color is a complex topic. Whenever a black celebrity lightens his or her skin – whether it’s pop star Michael Jackson, retired baseball player Sammy Sosa or rapper Nicki Minaj – they’re usually greeted with widespread ridicule. Some accuse them of self-loathing, while many in the African-American community view it as...
In the United States, inequality tends to be framed as an issue of either class, race or both. Consider, for example, criticism that Republicans’ new tax plan is a weapon of “class warfare,” or accusations that the recent U.S. government shutdown was racist. As an India-born novelist and scholar who teaches in the United States,...
Hidden just beneath the surface of the ongoing heated debate about immigration in the United States lurks an often unspoken concern: language. Specifically, whether immigration from Spanish-speaking countries threatens the English language’s dominance. Language and immigration have long been politically linked in the U.S. When Farmers Branch, Texas, passed an English-only “requirement” in 2006, then-Mayor...
Suddenly, popular media is saturated with stories of powerful men outed by women for behavior in the workplace. These alleged harassers seem to assume that power in the workplace grants them sexual access to anyone. In medieval Europe, most people assumed the same thing, although they didn’t call it “harassment.” As a historian of...
