Talking Right

说对话

作者: Aaron Swartz | 来源: aaronsw.com | 时间: 2006-10-17

Talking Right

言辞之道

Talking Right

言辞之道

Government, John Dewey famously said, is the shadow cast by big business over society. And political language, Geoffrey Nunberg argues in Talking Right, is the shadow cast by government. Democrats, he points out, seem to think language has a talismanic power, that if only they can find the right catch phrase or slogan, they can pull people over to their side. “Liberal” must become “progressive”, “family values” must become “valuing families”. There’s an intellectual cleverness to such stunts, and as a Berkeley linguist, Nunberg must want to believe in them. But he doesn’t. The words, he explains, are just a side-effect of the larger political situation. Dewey explained that attempts to change the shadow will have no effect without a change in the substance, and Nunberg heartily agrees.

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