Opposition leader Tony Abbott copped some flak when he referred to a soldier’s death in Afghanistan using a certain well-known philosophical homily: “Shit happens.”
How did this phrase enter the lexicon, and what impact has it had?
It’s all happening with linguist Daniel Midgley on this week’s Talk the Talk.
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlShow notes
Video of the Abbott Incident, as well as 20 riveting silent seconds.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Tony-Abbotts-cringeworthy-20-seconds/tabid/313/articleID/197897/Default.aspx#video
Use Google Ngram viewer to get a general idea about when “shit happens” first appeared in print:
Interested in more about Natural Semantic Metalanguage?
http://www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/semantics-in-brief.php
