Published: 6 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
In this extract from his new book, JOHN SAFRAN asks Professor of Linguistics Ghil’ad Zuckermann how the tobacco company manipulates the layman
PROFESSOR GHIL’AD ZUCKERMANN is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and I want to talk to him about the way Philip Morris have been manipulating language.
When I arrive at his office, I see that cheeky humour is one of the endangered languages he spends his time with. He’s in trouble for sticking a poster to his door that promoted etymology – the study of the origins of words – which joked that the origin of “studying” is not “student dying”.
“Just my door. It was not put up around the university.” He’s defending himself over the phone to a higher-up on campus. I gather they’re concerned it will trigger students, perhaps plant suicidal thoughts in them, like an Ozzy Osbourne record spun backwards.
But students wishing to leap out of a window will have to find someplace other than Professor Zuckermann’s office – his window is blocked by piles of books, as he’s run out of space in the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that stretch along the walls.
Over the next three days he’ll drive hundreds of kilometres, along the coast, to Port Lincoln. He hopes to convince school principals to begin teaching a local Indigenous language, Barngarla. He has spent the last ten years working with Barngarla people on a dictionary.
After sitting through one more conference call about the “student dying” poster fiasco, we climb into his SUV and he backs it out of his parking spot.
“We had a party for our son,” he says, turning onto the road. Professor Zuckermann may be a pointy headed intellectual but his face is round, and he has a ponytail. “We had 200 people, but none of them were Aboriginal, because my Aboriginal friends are eight hours from here. And my wife had a birthday cake.”
She wanted to light the candles. “I asked 200 people, none of them had a lighter, none of them had a match. None of them smoked. The next day I was in Port Augusta, teaching a class in the Barngarla language to 50 Aboriginal people. Then we had the break. Yeah. Fifty people smoked.”
