Holliday quoted in the Guardian

Nicole Holliday is quoted in an article on ‘Government by the worst’: why people are calling Trump’s new sidekicks a ‘kakistocracy’ in the Guardian. From the article: “Americans, Holliday says, love labels. “We like having words for things, because then they seem like they’ve been en-thing-ified” – in what sociolinguists call “enregisterment”, kakistocracy becomes an identifiable phenomenon. “Language is social,” Holliday notes, and when we have “conventionalized ways of talking about things, it makes us feel less alone” – especially when other ways of describing the situation feel inadequate.”