another -ista coinage

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri May 11 14:54:12 UTC 2012


On May 11, 2012, at 2:09 AM, Michael Newman wrote:

> I haven't seen Krugman use this term before, and I doubt anyone else has (though of course I don't know that). In any case, I think he's doing his best to make -ista more productive. The question is did he avoid -ist because of the other meanings of structuralist? Or is it taking on a a specific meaning?

I noticed that too, and figured he intended the nuance of 'trendy, bandwagon-jumping', as in "fashionista".  The blocking by established literary-cultural meanings of "structuralist" hadn't occurred to me.  I thought it was interesting (synchronicitically if not ironically) that the column appeared in the same space otherwise occupied by the columns of David Brooks, who is one of his (unspoken) targets.

LH

> see inflationista but not austerianista, which is actual austerian.
>
> So what’s with the obsessive push to declare our problems “structural”? And, yes, I mean obsessive. Economists have been debating this issue for several years, and the structuralistas won’t take no for an answer, no matter how much contrary evidence is presented.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/opinion/krugman-easy-useless-economics.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
>
>
>
> Michael Newman
> Associate Professor of Linguistics
> Queens College/CUNY
> michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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