"The Book of Mormon" is utterly fluent in the language of musical entertainment from vaudeville to anthem-laden poperettas like "Les Misérables" and beyond.
"For years people have been trying to engineer better languages and haven't succeeded as well as the current era of language for entertainment sake alone," Ms. Okrent said.
Ms. Handler, one of four or five stand-ups who have lately emerged as heiresses to the great bad-girl comic Joan Rivers, probably comes across as trashy to those who don't speak her language: the bullet-point speech of entertainment-news punch lines.
But when they're under 35, you have to speak the language of style, culture, entertainment, and there's been a kind of snobbery I think at the Times and other places built around the wrong ideas that you can't really have highly intellectual writing and reporting about popular subjects.
Cultural power can also backfire when the choices of those who embrace Americanness in language, accent, dress or choice of entertainment stir resentment in those who do not.
The claim of Ghani, Ataman & Egele (2012, p.321) that "students' common language of discourse, interaction and entertainment is always Pidgin... never Standard English generated the curiosity to undertake this study.
"For more than a quarter of a century, 'The Simpsons' has captured the hearts and minds of fans in a way that transcends ages, languages and cultures," said Fox Chairman of Entertainment Kevin Reilly "This groundbreaking series is not only the longest-running scripted show in television history, it's one of the greatest sitcoms of our time, and I'm looking forward to yet another landmark season".
They shout at one another all day in Sicilian dialect, drowning out their main source of entertainment and information: a 24-hour Italian-language radio station.
It was absurd, he wrote, that theatre audiences should be exposed to entire evenings of entertainment in a foreign tongue: "We no longer understand the language of our own stage".
