Your linguistic update for the day: I have always opposed the colloquial use of deconstruct as a fancy synonym for thoroughly analyze. It makes me think of the Village Voice's arts section, and not in a good way. Deconstruction properly refers to a specific and rather abstruse school of critical reading in which texts are examined not for their meanings or methods but for their internal contradictions and lacunae. As a rule of thumb, if a person hasn't gone to graduate school in the humanities, he or she probably isn't deconstructing anything.
But when a usage is employed by Joan Didion, that usage has, by definition, become acceptable and probably admirable. So as of now we can all go to town, deconstructionwise.
1/29/08
