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 88
Page 97
... words mean so many different things . ' ' The question is , ' said Humpty Dumpty , ' which is to be master that's all . ' There may be a connection between believing in these business. ' When I use a word , ' Humpty Dumpty said in a ...
... words mean so many different things . ' ' The question is , ' said Humpty Dumpty , ' which is to be master that's all . ' There may be a connection between believing in these business. ' When I use a word , ' Humpty Dumpty said in a ...
Page 118
... word , a banality , a buzz word or a cliché , if we are misled by it our rights are reduced in proportion . Words are bullets . They are also good for smothering , stran- gling and poisoning , and for hiding murderous inten- tions from ...
... word , a banality , a buzz word or a cliché , if we are misled by it our rights are reduced in proportion . Words are bullets . They are also good for smothering , stran- gling and poisoning , and for hiding murderous inten- tions from ...
Page 128
... words that shape the meaning here . Each word is a weapon of a different kind and wounds in different ways . Plainly the provocation is also in who says the words and how . It helps if it is someone with a claim to wisdom , for example ...
... words that shape the meaning here . Each word is a weapon of a different kind and wounds in different ways . Plainly the provocation is also in who says the words and how . It helps if it is someone with a claim to wisdom , for example ...
Other editions - View all
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