Making a word meme
Making a word meme
- May 17, 2013
- David Meyer, sociology professor, is quoted in the New York Times May 17, 2013
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From the New York Times:
Agree, disagree, read the book or not: “Lean In,” the title of Sheryl Sandberg’s
manifesto on women’s empowerment, has quickly become one of those ubiquitous slogans.
One might even say it has reached a tipping point, to borrow a phrase that also made
the leap from the best-seller list into everyday conversation. “Lean in” is the idiom
of the moment for headline writers, the Twitterati and New Yorker cartoonists. Inevitably
it has moved beyond mere shorthand for the ideas mapped out in Ms. Sandberg’s book,
which urges women to assertively pursue career ambitions, “combine niceness with insistence”
and demand that their partners share equally in child care… The fungibility of the
phrase has certainly fueled its spread. “It’s short, digestible, easily interpretable
and easily mis-interpretable,” said David S. Meyer, a University of California, Irvine,
sociology professor.
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