Anne Curzan
Contributor, That’s What They SayAnne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. She also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education.
As an expert in the history of the English language, Anne describes herself as a fount of random linguistic information about how English works and how it got to be that way. She received the University’s Henry Russel Award for outstanding research and teaching in 2007, as well as the Faculty Recognition Award in 2009 and the 2012 John Dewey Award for undergraduate teaching.
Anne has published multiple books and dozens of articles on the history of the English language (from medieval to modern), language and gender, and pedagogy. Her newest book is Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014). She has also created three audio/video courses for The Great Courses, including “The Secret Life of Words” and “English Grammar Boot Camp.”
When she is not tracking down new slang or other changes in the language, Anne can be found running around Ann Arbor, swimming in pools both indoor and out, and now doing yoga (in hopes that she can keep running for a few more years to come).
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Looking at late 19th century language peeves can often point to a change in progress, but not always. -
Of all the topics we could cover this week on That's What They Say, we chose these ones over those ones.
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A sea change can now be caused by many things other than the sea, and some of its dramatic effects have been lost in the process.
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We're going to try not to touch the third rail, but we are going to talk about it.
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Major League Baseball playoffs and football tailgate season both mean the smell of hot dogs is in the air.
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We don't encounter petards very often anymore. That’s unless we’re being, metaphorically speaking, “hoisted with our own petard.”
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There are plenty of people out there who see "utilize" as a pretentious substitute for "use." However, some people are completely comfortable utilizing the verb "utilize."
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There’s the “yea” in voting “yea” or “nay," and then there’s the celebratory “Yay!" Oh yeah, there's also "yeah."
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. There are a lot of ways to spell "whoa."
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You could say, "I don't like him singing," or you could say, "I don't like his singing." Believe it or not, some folks have very strong feelings about which of those is correct.
