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
Results 1-3 of 34
Page 10
... Politicians go amongst the people primed with local knowledge and saying ' Gidday ' or ' How do you do ' , according to the prevailing custom . Priests murmur Latin phrases that are full of meaning even to their non - Latin - speaking ...
... Politicians go amongst the people primed with local knowledge and saying ' Gidday ' or ' How do you do ' , according to the prevailing custom . Priests murmur Latin phrases that are full of meaning even to their non - Latin - speaking ...
Page 58
... politicians : the media also lures them to its peculiar way with words . It has been said of the present leader of the Labor Party that he sounds like he's reading the news . That may depend on the ears of those who hear him , or the ...
... politicians : the media also lures them to its peculiar way with words . It has been said of the present leader of the Labor Party that he sounds like he's reading the news . That may depend on the ears of those who hear him , or the ...
Page 136
... Politicians are now so conscious of the boundaries of safety and opportunity , they speak as if what they are describing has been decided in advance of them : as indeed it has , by polls and focus groups . They say what the people want ...
... Politicians are now so conscious of the boundaries of safety and opportunity , they speak as if what they are describing has been decided in advance of them : as indeed it has , by polls and focus groups . They say what the people want ...
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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