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Don’t be beguiled by Orwell: using plain and clear language is not always a moral virtue
An image from the 1965 adaptation of Orwell's "1984". Photograph: Getty Images Orwell season has led me back to his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”, first published in 1946. It is written with enviable clarity.Loaded Words: How Language Shapes The Gun Debate : It's All Politics
Advocates for and against stronger gun laws demonstrate in the Pennsylvania Capitol on Jan. 23 in Harrisburg, Pa. Matt Rourke / AP The country has been debating gun regulations for months. Later this week, a Senate committee will start work on various proposals, including a background check on every gun sale and a ban on assault weapons. But this debate over guns goes beyond disagreements about policy.
5 February 2013 Last updated at 19:46 ET Going forward. Leverage. Level playing field.
Why do politicians use business jargon?
During my junior and senior years in high school, I wrote my first novel, then titled Getting It On. The story was about a troubled boy named Charlie Decker with a domineering father, a load of adolescent angst and a fixation on Ted Jones, the school's most popular boy. Charlie takes a gun to school, kills his algebra teacher and holds his class hostage. Ten years later, after the first half-dozen of my books had become bestsellers, I revisited Getting It On, rewrote it, and submitted it to my paperback publisher under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. It was published as Rage, sold a few thousand copies and disappeared from view.
Stephen King: why the US must introduce limited gun controls | World news
Language in Conflict - Negation
Like opposition , negation refers to a particular way in which language reflects human cognition's view of the world. Linguistic representations of opposition encourage the reader to view phenomena as being somehow opposed to each other – 'Democracy by contrast with corrupt autocracy'. Negation , meanwhile, constructs in a reader or hearer's mind a representation of a situation that is at odds with the reality constructed elsewhere in the text – 'Democracy is not possible in the current political situation'.
Heists and mayhem: the language of crime
There has been a lot on British minds recently, with horsemeat and obesity coming high on the list of preoccupations. But amid the furore over such unpalatable subjects, it was a different headline altogether that caught my eye. ‘Diamond heist at Brussels airport nets gang up to £30m in gems’, was the Guardian ’s version, while the Daily Telegraph followed up with ‘Mole mastermind sought for perfect Brussels diamond heist’. For the Daily Mail , it was simply ‘The Belgian Job’. The facts of the story were certainly remarkable, involving eight men who managed to cut a hole in a security fence and burst through it in fake police cars. Although heavily armed with military machine-guns, they managed to seize the diamonds without firing a shot.
The Simon Lee Gallery in Mayfair is currently showing work by the veteran American artist Sherrie Levine . A dozen small pink skulls in glass cases face the door. A dozen small bronze mirrors, blandly framed but precisely arranged, wink from the walls. In the deep, quiet space of the London gallery, shut away from Mayfair's millionaire traffic jams, all is minimal, tasteful and oddly calming. Until you read the exhibition hand-out.
A user's guide to art-speak | Art and design
When writing his screenplay for the film Lincoln , playwright Tony Kushner used his copy of the Oxford English Dictionary to check for possible anachronisms , seeking to impart the flavor of 19th-century English to the script. How much has the vocabulary of English changed since Abraham Lincoln ’s presidency? About 25% of the OED ’s entries are for words which entered the English language after Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address , including racism (1926) , leftist (1924) , and boycott (1880).
If Obama had been Lincoln: 10 lines from Obama’s Second Inaugural Address that wouldn’t have been used in 1865
Language and power
Introduction This guide is written for students who are following GCE Advanced level (AS and A2) syllabuses in English Language. This resource may also be of general interest to language students on university degree courses, trainee teachers and anyone with a general interest in language science. On this page I use red type for emphasis.
"Skiver" v "striver". It suits Cameron's tabloid-slick delivery and Steve Hilton's blue-sky viciousness, but how did it go viral? Why does Ed Miliband now use "striver" as though it were an acceptable way to describe someone, by a stranger's groundless estimation of how hard they are hypothetically trying? The skiver, in opposition parlance, is always unmentioned, yet he lurks; Labour won't tolerate him either, this feckless bogeyman of Westminster's devising.
Skivers v strivers: the argument that pollutes people's minds
My favorite moment of the 2012 presidential debates came at the beginning of the final confrontation Monday night. The moderator, Bob Schieffer, invited both candidates to “give your thoughts” on the Middle East. Republican nominee Mitt Romney went first and began with a typical stumbling attempt to be charming, almost successful in its very failure: Something about an earlier “humorous event” (it was the annual Al Smith dinner for the archdiocese of New York , at which politicians tell jokes) and how “it’s nice to maybe be funny this time, not on purpose. We’ll see what happens.”