The F-Word

So it’s come to this. The insight we need for this fraught age — when the culture wars are, in part, language wars — is an egg’s. “ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ” The line, of course, comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and it is followed by a rejoinder that the veteran broadcaster Carol Off might have employed in her thoughtful examination of the weaponization and abuse of language today. “ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ”

The publication of Off’s insightful volume came after the two political conventions in the United States, but I devoured an advance copy during the Democratic conclave in mid-August and was struck by how the book underlined the principal theme of the gathering that sent Kamala Harris into the general election campaign against Donald Trump...