Death Sentence: The Decay of Public LanguagePart diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, Don Watson's Death Sentence is scathing, funny and brilliant. ' ... in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.' Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politicians u speak to each other and to us in cliched, impenetrable, lifeless sludge. Don Watson can bear it no longer. In Death Sentence, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words u and their users u who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentence is a small book of profound weight u and timeliness. |
From inside the book
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Page 81
... evil ; I offer you this sign as the sign of the state . Friedrich Nietzsche , Thus Spake Zarathustra ' We need to counter the shock wave of the evil- doer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates ...
... evil ; I offer you this sign as the sign of the state . Friedrich Nietzsche , Thus Spake Zarathustra ' We need to counter the shock wave of the evil- doer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates ...
Page 128
... evil when , for all the proofs of evil , there is no evidence of an axis existing , I am as likely to cause as much con- fusion as if I had said axle of evil or praxis of evil or something even more ridiculous . If I say nests of evil ...
... evil when , for all the proofs of evil , there is no evidence of an axis existing , I am as likely to cause as much con- fusion as if I had said axle of evil or praxis of evil or something even more ridiculous . If I say nests of evil ...
Page 129
... evil ; but a cunning person might . A cunning person might say evil as often as is necessary to make him feel good , or his constituents feel both good about themselves and fond of him for making them feel that way . For the same kind ...
... evil ; but a cunning person might . A cunning person might say evil as often as is necessary to make him feel good , or his constituents feel both good about themselves and fond of him for making them feel that way . For the same kind ...
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Common terms and phrases
Advance Australia Fair American argument Australian better Burke Bush buzz word clichés commitment communications context continuous improvement core corporate culture customers Czeslaw Milosz dead democracy economic Elements of Style Elmore Leonard empowered English language enhanced evil Exercise feel Flaubert flexible following sentence football George Orwell George W grammar guage hear henhouse hope Hopefully human ideas imagination imitate implement inspiration issue John Howard journalists kind Knowledge Management leaders least less Lincoln live managerial marketing mateship means ment mind mission statements modern moral clarity never Norman Mailer numbers organisational outcome parrot Philip Roth phrases politicians President Primo Levi prioritised prose public language reason Rewrite the following rhetoric Shakespeare social someone sound speak speech strategy talk television tell thing thought Tim Fischer tion truth universities verbs W.H. Auden wonder write