Middle/Meddle English

Caroline Bergvall, on the contemporary state(s) of language and identity in the art/social/political/etc. world:

"I repeat what many have said, that poetic or art language must not implicitly be held to account of identities and national language, the seductions of literary history, or the frequently fetishistic methodologies of art movements, but rather seek, far and close, the indicators and practices of language in flux, of thought in making: pleasured language, pressured language, language in heated use, harangued language, forms of language revolutionized by action, polemical language structures that propose an intense deliberate reappraisal of the given world and its given forms."

from Meddle English (2011)

Liu Xiaobo

PEN American Center protest of Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment on Christmas, 2009. DeLillo, Albee, and others read:

Lexical 'chunking'

A brief bit by Ben Zimmer on the habit of using idiomatic "chunks" of speech in relation to fundamental language learning. Actually, this Sunday's issue of NY Times Magazine is devoted entirely to topics of education and learning technologies, and worth reading.