New edition of "The F Word"

The new Oxford University Press edition of Jesse Sheidlower's The F Word is getting a fair amount of play in the media. Here's a link Inside Higher Ed's interview: http://tinyurl.com/yc3m8s6.
At the same time, Jesse Sheidlower's 1 October 2009 article on "Why its so hard to put sex in the dictionary" has the blogs buzzing. The (very graphic!) article is on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2227971/.

Keeping up with current slang (it's not easy)

So says Douglas Quenqua in a piece for the 21 August 2009 New York Times, "Dude, you are so (not) Obama." Quenqua writes, "Keeping up with the latest slang is at once easier and harder than ever. The number of slang dictionaries is growing, both online and off, not to mention social networking media that invent and discard words, phrases and memes at the speed of broadband. The life of slang is now shorter than ever, say linguists, and what was once a reliable code for identifying members of an in-group or subculture is losing some of its magic." DSNA members also chime in. For the rest of the article, visit http//www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/fashion/23slang.html?hpw.

"Street Smart": Urban Dictionary

New York Times essayist Virginia Heffernan has a lively discussion of the Urban Dictionary at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05FOB-medium-t.html?ref=magazine. You must sign up to read the Times on line but it's free.