The Language Lane

“Well, in being a virtuous leader, that’s where your ability to use the third liberal art of rhetoric comes into play. You must be a good...

Only on rereading Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea for my course on African American Autobiography did I ponder name and geography...

Once I was at a composition conference headquartered in downtown Nashville. Some colleagues and I, having never seen Fisk University,...

In the club of ethnic labeling, BIPOC tryna get it in. The term Black, Indigenous and People of Color is a well-meaning attempt in...

I missed a good speech on September 15, 1970. The person that gave it, Chuck Scott, as we knew him, was a childhood friend, my next-door...

It is fairly easy to see that white nationalism is largely an expression of fascist impulses. It would be hard not to when...

The virtuoso poet Audre Lorde opened her popular poem “Power” with the following lines: The difference between poetry and rhetoric is...

Amid several notable responses, CNN legal analyst Laura Coates made a great linguistic move on air the day of Attorney General Bill...

A small casualty of COVID-19 was my first scheduled trip to China. In anticipation of my participation in forums about culture, I became...

Never been all that easy to get Black doctoral students through English departments. They know it and I know it. Research not needed to...