performativity
n.— «Recently, a Harvard teaching fellow, Jen Hui Bon Hoa, sent an e-mail to her students in English 193: Introduction to 20th-Century Literary Theory, informing them that the next day’s lesson would be a “performativity show and tell.” Discussion would center around a set of texts on gender theory, and Ms. Hui Bon Hoa wanted everyone to dress for the occasion. She wanted them to come in drag.» —“What’s Happening At Harvard? Try ‘Performativity’” by Leon Neyfakh in Cambridge, Massachusetts New York Sun (New York City) May 22, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...