Slut: The Other Four Letter S-Word
Heard today on fresh air. Audio available at link.
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/13/148295582/slut-the-other-four-letter-s-word?ps=cprs
March 13, 2012
Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.
(Sandra Fluke)
"My choice of words was not the best," Rush Limbaugh said in his apology. That's the standard formula for these things — you apologize not for what you said but for the way you said it.
Though in this case, there didn't seem to be a lot of distance between thought and word. What was the point of saying Sandra Fluke was asking to be paid for sex and then adding "What does that make her?" if not to get to that potent monosyllable "slut"?
Whatever your view of Limbaugh, he's one of our most gifted controversialists, and he must have had a good idea that that word would kick up more of a row than any of the other things he said. Still, he obviously didn't anticipate that the reaction would be so intense that it would drive off advertisers who had been willing to overlook all his previous effervescences about race and gender.
It couldn't have landed well. "Slut" is a charged word even when it's just used metaphorically. When MSNBC host Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut last year, he had to apologize for his "vile language." And that was just about Ingraham's politics, whereas Limbaugh was trying to discredit Fluke by literally going after her sex life with a word that is freighted with repugnance.
more at link
