Mediaboss Marketing

When Mitt Romney's aide Rick Gorka became upset with the press corps last month for shouting questions at the candidate as he left the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Poland, he famously shouted at them: "Kiss my a - -. This is a holy site for the Polish people!"

Ascent of the A-Word

By Geoffrey Nunberg

Public Affairs, 251 pp., $25.99

The joke wasn't the word itself, but the fact that Gorka flung gutter language at a place he described as holy. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, author of the thought-provoking -- and occasionally just provoking -- "Ascent of the A-Word," was probably as amused as anyone else by this tension and the question it raises: Which is worse, to shout questions at a candidate about his earlier gaffes immediately after a solemn wreath-laying, or to react by directing those questioners' lips to their nether regions?

As Nunberg points out, late in his book, "the charge of incivility has become a standard weapon in political discourse, a way of delegitimating a person or group and denying their right to participate in a debate . . . And [it] can also be a pretext for engaging in incivility oneself."

Name-calling has no doubt been around since language was invented. It's probably a primary reason that language was invented. Taunts -- even nasty ones -- can be viewed as the civil alternative to punching someone in the face. Or killing him. So in some ways, name-calling is a giant step up the evolutionary ladder.

Nonetheless, most people are offended by it, especially when words like "a - - - - - -," or worse, are invoked. But as Nunberg points out, substituting other words -- "lout" or "jerk" -- just isn't the same:

"Likening someone to an anus suggests that he is small, foul, noisome, and low, as we conventionally view that anatomical feature . . . whenever we use it, we're flouting the norms of propriety . . . You can't pronounce a - - - - - - without evoking the people who disapprove of it . . . and placing yourself, at least symbolically, outside the circle of polite conversation."

Much of this book -- too much, in fact -- is concerned with defining the titular noun, its types and its degrees. Meriting this slur, Nunberg writes, is determined "by the breadth of [this individual's] self-delusion, the discrepancy between his perceptions and the reality before his eyes, the energy of his denials and rationalizations. The greater the gulf, the more of an a - - - - - - he is."

Go here to see the original:
Geoffrey Nunberg's 'Ascent of the A-Word' looks at the slur heard round the world