Category: language and politics

Like the law, politics is overwhelmingly about language.  Misrepresentation and euphemisms are rampant, along with many other devices to advance political agendas through the dishonest use of language.  This category will try to keep up.

Stop the pronoun craziness

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The babble of political correctness

Politically incorrect speech is neither red nor blue.  It is red, while and blue.  It is American.  Repression of speech leads to repression of thought.

This is a message that the p.c. crowd — in the media, in the universities – needs to hear again and again, because they don’t get it, especially when a Presidential candidate (Warren) announces “her” pronouns on the debate stage, and a teacher is fired for not using the student’s preferred pronouns.  It is not enough, the argument goes,  to have pronouns of two genders, when there are so many other genders.  We need more pronouns!

Stop the pronoun craziness full post

(1290 words, 1 image, estimated 5:10 mins reading time)

Code-switching and pandering – a new low

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Code-switching can be used in the service of pandering, as when Presidential candidates lapse into Spanish to win favor in the cheapest manner.

 Spare me the sight / of this thankless breed, these politicians / who cringe for favors from a screaming mob / and do not care what harm they do their friends / providing they can please a crowd!

Euripides, Hecuba (c. 425 BCE)

This post introduces my Blahblahblah Award, bestowed upon the politician using the most devious and manipulative language since…well, since the previous award.  The grinding Presidential race will continue for many months, so there should be plenty of material.

Code-switching and pandering – a new low full post

(671 words, 1 image, estimated 2:41 mins reading time)

On baby talk and language change

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Kinds of lingo

Linguistics is concerned with who says what to whom, and why. Why do groups of people adopt their own manner of speaking? There are many answers.

 

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?  I don’t know and I don’t care.

William Safire

 

I admire John McWhorter so much for the breadth of his accomplishments, his accessibility to the media, his eloquent lectures.

I recently saw a video clip in which he pegged Trump’s speech as characteristic of primitive humans just getting their “language chops” together.

On baby talk and language change full post

(1069 words, 1 image, estimated 4:17 mins reading time)

Words, maps, territories, and the political abuse of language

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From mind to thought (and from there to the speech and auditory organs)
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The truth is what most people believe.  And they believe that which is repeated most often.

Paul Josef Goebbels

Here is the text of a letter I sent to the Manchester NH Union-Leader (published 6/21/19):

March 19, 2019

Dear Editor,

Let me add my voice to the chorus of people outraged by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s  comparison of immigrant confinement to concentration camps.  This is worse than obscene and ignorant.  It is an utterly irresponsible use of language.  As a linguist, I am appalled by the deceptive reducing of two vastly different entities to a single point of comparison — confinement.

Words, maps, territories, and the political abuse of language full post

(750 words, 1 image, estimated 3:00 mins reading time)

The difference between code-switching and pandering (pay attention, Hillary)

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Be yourself.

“…style is intrinsic and private, like…voice or gesture, partly a matter of inheritance, partly of cultivation.  It is more than a pattern of expression.  It is the pattern of the soul.”

-Maurice Valency

Think of language as haberdashery: you have a closet full of clothes for every occasion. Your clothing choice expresses yourself in a particular context, for a particular audience.  In the same way, barely aware of it (or not aware at all), you change your speech to what you think (though there are no conscious thinking processes) will be effective for a particular situation and audience.

The difference between code-switching and pandering (pay attention, Hillary) full post

(1236 words, 1 image, estimated 4:57 mins reading time)

Biden’s plagiarism alone disqualifies him

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Stopping plagiarism is as hard as defining it. As long as certain ideas, themes, personages, etc., remain in the public domain, there will be accusations – but not necessarily dishonesty. Biden’s plagiarism is at a whole different level.

 

 

Don’t forget why God made your eyes — plagiarize!

Tom Lehrer, “Lobachevsky”

I’m involved in a fair number of plagiarism cases.   In non-fiction allegations, I typically represent a student who has omitted quotation marks, possibly because he/she was lifting what appeared to be basic background information.  There are very few ways of saying some things with the appropriate degree of precision (especially in legal and scientific writing).

Biden’s plagiarism alone disqualifies him full post

(577 words, 1 image, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

Political language 2019: simpler but no less devious

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Political speech – simpler, but no less devious

Definitions of “politician”:

An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared.

Ambrose Bierce

(One who) divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.  That means he knows only one class: enemies.

Friedrich Nietzsche

[Someone] who identifies the sound of his own voice with the infallible voice of the public.

Joseph K. Howard

A set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who…are, taken as a mass, at least one step removed from honest men.

Political language 2019: simpler but no less devious full post

(2363 words, 1 image, estimated 9:27 mins reading time)

RIP Philip Roth, prophet of political correctness

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Philip Roth produced a tremendous volume of work, on a machine like this. In “The Anatomy Lesson,” he writes of a man tortured by neck pain – possibly from all the typewriting.

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.”

― Philip Roth, American Pastoral
“You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn’t annihilate human nature.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

 

A prophet of political correctness

One of my favorite authors, Philip Roth, died recently, leaving a magnificent body of work. Unlike other personal faves, Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, who composed mostly in the key of J (for “Jewish”; Malamud’s The Natural is an exception), Roth’s versatility was truly impressive.

RIP Philip Roth, prophet of political correctness full post

(1117 words, 1 image, estimated 4:28 mins reading time)

Trump, Trump, Trump: desperately seeking synonyms

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Charles Dickens is famous for giving his characters whimsical names that often reflect their personalities.  “Scrooge” is probably the best-known, unmistakably conveying a grasping miserliness in almost tangible terms.

If Dickens had written about a vulgar, aggressive billionaire intent on seeking power, crushing his enemies, and emblazoning his name around the world, he could hardly have chosen a better name than “Trump.”

But we’re not talking about a literary character.  Trump is a real person who makes sure his name is repeated 24/7 in every possible mass-media outlet.

over-Trumpified

Trump, Trump, Trump: desperately seeking synonyms full post

(345 words, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

For a quick — but accurate — summary of political rhetoric, read this

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This is as good a summary of political rhetoric as I’ve seen:

“Political speeches are rarely occasions for truth-telling. But the good ones combine a description of shared reality with the expression of a vision, or with words of celebration. The mediocre ones consist of platitudes—well-intentioned but lacking the force of inspiration or recognition. And then there is the genre of the thoroughly insincere pronouncement that is all empty ritual. This is not normally observed in countries with functioning democratic institutions, because hollow words are the very opposite of accountability. These kinds of speeches are usually given in dictatorships: their intended audience is not the public but the tyrant. This is what we observed in Washington on Wednesday, and it’s the scariest part of Trump’s big tax triumph.” (Masha Gessen, The New Yorker.)

For a quick — but accurate — summary of political rhetoric, read this full post

(141 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)

Is Stephen Miller making policy decisions?  Who is Stephen Miller?

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The answer to the second question is easier than the answer to the first.  Miller is from Santa Monica http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-speechwriter-stephen-miller-pens-1495224315-htmlstory.html and, by whatever circuitous paths speechwriters’ careers take (and there are some weird ones), he is writing the President’s speeches.  At least, that’s the only source for Trump’s formal rhetoric that I could find.  Usually by this time, we know who’s writing the President’s speeches and where they come from.

At least, I do – I look for these things.

Is Stephen Miller making policy decisions?  Who is Stephen Miller? full post

(748 words, estimated 3:0 mins reading time)