The Rev. David von Schlichten is a graduate (1997) of this seminary and pastor of St. James Lutheran Church, Youngstown, Pennsylvania.

He authored "Kiyoshi 'Uncle John' Watanabe: Brace Samaritan Smuggling" in Witness at the Crossroads, a 2001 collection of biographical sketches of those who took up a leading role in public life from the Gettysburg Seminary. He expects the publication of a chapbook of poetry this year, entitled "Poedifier."

Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times
by Geoffrey Nunberg, Perseus Books, 2004, 298 pp.

Reviewed by Dr. David von Schlichten

            A few weeks ago, I was thinking anew about the manner in which many people talk about prayer. Often, they make statements such as, “My prayers really got me through that tough time,” and “Never underestimate the power of prayer.” Such statements are vexing because they suggest that the ones making them see the power lying in the prayer itself and not in God. In reality, ultimately the reason prayer works is because God responds to it, but the wording many of us use suggests that we think of prayer as effective by itself and that God is not involved, or at least is not the primary actor.

            That said, another possibility is that the word “prayer” might simply be a circumlocution for “God” that people use because it is a safer, less controversial word in conversation. In other words, while people are saying “prayer,” they are implying “God.”

            For some feedback on these semantic ruminations, I emailed them to Dr. Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist whose insightful and witty commentaries about language usage I had often heard with fascination on NPR’s Fresh Air. The same day, he sent an amiable reply in which he enhanced my thoughts by suggesting that contemporary prayer-talk likely points to a Norman Vincent Peale-type orientation. The positive thinking and power of the individual are more important than the deity to which the individual prays, or so many of us think.

Such helpful perspicacity is plentiful in Nunberg’s collection of commentaries entitled Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times. As Nunberg points out in the introduction, this book is not for linguistic sticklers. It is not a lucubration against the decline of the English language into darkness. Rather, Going Nucular reflects on word usage as a starting point for considering attitudes toward politics and other important issues. Nunberg does a marvelous job of priming the reader to think about what is behind particular trends in word-usage. Indeed, the book’s greatest contribution to the reader is that it helps open her ears to the subtext of how people use words, a priceless skill for us pastors, who labor with words almost without ceasing.

The title piece, “Going Nucular,” provides a sharp example of Nunberg’s approach. He suggests that there are two varieties of linguistic error, the “typo” and the “thinko.” While a typo is saying something incorrectly due to a mistake, a thinko is saying something incorrectly as part of deliberately embracing a faulty idea. As an example, Nunberg lifts up the widespread mispronunciation of “nuclear” as “nucular.” He proposes that while some people mispronounce the word unintentionally, others mispronounce it on purpose. After all, President Bush, who mispronounces the word on a regular basis, surely knows better, Nunberg says. Bush is well-educated, and his father, also notorious for less-than-graceful speech, never seemed to have difficulty with the word. Perhaps, considers Nunberg, the President’s thinko is a “faux-bubba thing,” an error this Texan makes intentionally to irritate highbrow Easterners. Nunberg posits that, if Bush mispronounces the word all the time, such as in phrases like “nuclear family,” and not only when talking about weapons, then the faux-bubba thinking is probably the root of the mispronunciation. However, if the President only says “nucular” when talking about weapons and otherwise says the word correctly, then the mispronunciation is probably part of a kind of Pentagonesque swagger, a way of saying, “I’m the boss, I’m in control of the weapons and the power, so I’ll say the word any way I want.”

This essay, one of sixty-four, not only illustrates Nunberg’s talent for intelligent observations about word-usage. It also shows his liberal leaning. Nunberg is quicker to critique the Right than the Left. People who lean the same way will probably enjoy the book more than people who do not, although it will prove helpful and entertaining for both sides. The essay “Going Nucular” also provides an example of Nunberg’s writing style. It is relaxed, conversational, even while also being erudite. He is quick to start sentences with “and” and “but,” obviously not concerned about being a grammatical stickler. But then, that style is a smart fit for Nunberg, and not just because well over half of his pieces were written to be read on the radio and so, in a sense, were oral pieces, which tend to be more relaxed stylistically. Nunberg’s less formal style is also a match for the book’s purpose, which is, not to lament apostrophe misplacements, but rather to analyze language usage to see what that usage says about what people are thinking. Besides, Nunberg’s style is pleasant. Reading Going Nucular feels like spending an evening at dinner with Geoff, listening to him talk knowledgeably and astutely about a feast of topics.

Another intriguing example of Nunberg’s approach is in his essay entitled “Like, Wow!” In it, he explores the tendency among adolescents to overuse and misuse the word “like.” Rather than the usual decrying of this usage as a symptom of the immaturity and ignorance of teens, Nunberg avers that the way teenagers use the word is actually sophisticated. For instance, teenagers sometimes use “like” to indicate that what follows is speech, as in, “I was like, ‘You so don’t know what you’re talking about.’” Nunberg adds, though, that “I was like” actually suggests more than “I said.” “I was like” implies a recollection of action that accompanies the speech, while “I said” merely indicates speech. Speakers are apt to follow “I was like” with a gesture or a noise as by a sentence. As he says toward the end of the piece, “Say is for telling, like is for showing” (p. 266). He offers further thoughts about “like” that readers are bound to find illuminating.