Language Archives - Public Seminar

Education

The Words We Learn to Fear

How authoritarianism begins with the policing of language

December 4, 2025 • by Maria B. Olujic

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that line until my own country broke apart. Now I see what he meant—when people learn to fear their own words, it is its own form of exile. Two of my uncles learned this early: ...

Media

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Why are my friends talking like incels?

October 7, 2024 • by Jake Neuffer

“Been gymmaxxing lately,” my friend quipped as he made a protein shake. “Proteinpilled too,” I said. My generation is speaking a new slang—new to us, anyway. Not quite ubiquitous, but familiar to that contingent of chronically online youth (and is that phrase not becoming a tautology?). These are phrases borrowed from incels, ...

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Education

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Preserving identity

September 26, 2024 • by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the international community rallied behind Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country. Vital financial aid was accompanied by efforts to better understand a nation that did not surrender in the face of the Russian military forces that overwhelmingly surpassed the ...

Ukrainian Studies Struggle Against Imperial Heritage

Philosophy

When Words Lose Their Meaning

When the terms used to describe key concepts go viral, they get used in new ways

May 15, 2023 • by Harold James

A series of improperly priced terms are used in current political debate: capitalism, socialism, democracy, imperialism, multilateralism, geopolitics, populism, technocracy, globalism, globalization, and neoliberalism. They have become the standard munition that is fired between the sides in today’s culture, policy, and economic wars....

Migration

The Dilemma of a Fragmented Self

Mass migrations, language, and the future of identity

November 9, 2022 • by Ken Hu

How can language create such a convoluted way of experiencing the everyday world? We can explore this phenomenon with two linked concepts: the speech act and the discourse community. ...

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Psyche

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

On trans identity, poetry, and fighting for the dignity of one’s body

February 18, 2020 • by Isa Guzman

i. i say morning off-white ceiling insect corpse light dent fixture twenty-year-old piece of double-sided tape breath breaking mirror sun through gate’s red curtain I say to the ceiling: “I wish I wasn’t here anymore.” My body hadn’t been cooperating with me. I was constantly tired. A long-term relationship had ended. My graduate ...

I Started Transitioning This Past Summer. The Hardest Part Is the Unearthing of Past Traumas

Fashion

Do My Lies Say Anything About Fashion?

February 11, 2020 • by Otto von Busch

The answer comes out of my mouth almost as a reflex when my colleague asks about my outfit. It is the quick nature of my response that draws my attention to it, as I so often feel my other replies come frustratingly slow. It seems wit was never my game. ...

Sex & Gender

Don’t Pop the Champagne Yet on “They”

Cultural milestones are powerful — but is language a substitute for equal rights?

December 21, 2019 • by Jen Manion

In 2017, the popular tv show Billions introduced the nonbinary character Taylor Mason (played by Asia Kate Dillon) who used they/them pronouns in a significant recurring role. It features one of the most incisive scenes in television or film that captures the significance of nonbinary identity. Taylor says they don’t want to ...

Uncategorized

Reclaiming Victimology

Why there are no victims – only survivors

December 3, 2019 • by Alyson Cole

It’s not the poor, marginalized, or dispossessed, but those who occupy positions of privilege and power who seem most eager to assume the victim mantle today, those Lawrence Glickman classifies as “elites.” On the one hand, this is not new: American history is littered with examples of dominant groups deploying iconic imagery ...

Sex & Gender

The Sun is the Size of a Human Foot

An Interview with Andrea Long Chu

October 29, 2019 • by McKenzie Wark

But I think the more proper question is: “Whose foot?” It’s not about the foot not “actually” being the size of the sun. It's the fact that there's necessarily a subjective relation that changes from person to person. So I think the place where truth becomes important is not actually ...

Democracy

When Is a Lie a Lie?

Trump, Journalism, and Objectivity

January 1, 2019 • by Ian Olasov

Public Seminar is pleased to announce that Ian Olosov's essay, originally printed at Public Seminar on March 13 2017, was one of four essays to win of the American Philosophical Association 2018 Public Philosophy Op-Ed contest. Congratulations Ian! It is neither fake news, nor really even new news, that the press is struggling ...