History Is Bunk!

A Figaro follower asks an interesting question…

In Geoff Nunberg’s NPR article “Irked By The Way Millennials Speak” he uses a rhetorical device (I think) in the second paragraph and I am trying to discover the name and use of the device. The second paragraph is: “But when it comes to language, history is bunk. Or anyway, it hasn’t deterred critics from monitoring the speech of today’s young people for the signs of cultural decline.” I believe he is using the word “bunk” in the first sentence as a rhetorical device to prove the point in the second sentence. Bunk used to mean a place to sleep, he is using it as its more modern meaning (i.e., nonsense, trash), and I’m curious if that is a device in and of itself and what it is.

We reply:

You’re right: Nunberg means that history is nonsense. But his usage isn’t so modern.

The definition comes from the old colloquialism “bunkum,” which in turn may derive from the North Carolina county of Buncomb. A member of Congress from that county gave a boring speech in 1820 in order to be quoted at length in the Congressional Record, for the sake of his constituents. His fellow congressmen said he gave a “speech for Buncomb.” From then on, nonsensical, empty, or misleading language became known as “bunk.” Or so the story goes.

What figure is Nunberg using in his NPR piece? You could say it’s a form of irony. Nunberg uses archaic slang to refer to the language of history. Or you might even say his expression is a form of prosopopoeia, an exercise in which the speaker takes on the language of another character.  He deliberately sounds like a grouchy old man to make fun of grouchy old people who, throughout history, have lamented the decline of civilization. 

Personally, we wish the term would come back and replace scatological twin “B.S.” Bunk is so much less…fecal. And it requires no initials.