John McWhorter, linguist and author "The Language Hoax"

Air Dates: June 18-20, 2016

This week's guest on “Report from Santa Fe” is John McWhorter, linguist, and author of a number of books on language and on race relations. He has written such books as “The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language,” “What Language Is,” and “Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority.”

McWhorter is well-known for his TED talk “Txting is killing language. JK!” on texting, which he regards as “fingered speech.” He discusses the evolution of such texting expressions as “lol” that convey nuance in a system where you don't have the voice and face to do it the way you normally would.

As a linguist, McWhorter also discusses black English and “blaccents.” He notes that people think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.

A popular cultural commentator, McWhorter also writes for Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, and has appeared on National Public Radio, The Colbert Report, MSNBC, and Real Time with Bill Maher.