Worth a listen for those concerned with the of language of politics and how it has been kidnapped, manipulated, and raped by the right is the 30 minute
Terry Gross/Fresh Air
interview
today of linguist
Geoff Nunberg
who is author of the new book titled "
Talking
Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking,
Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing,
Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show". Geoff Nunberg is an adjunct
professor at Berkeley and a researcher and consulting professor at Stanford. Whether
we like it or not the right has stolen the language of politics and we need to
take it back, now. An excerpt from the book is available on the Terry Gross/NPR
web site as well.
UPDATE:
Here's a summary from the Terry Gross/NPR web site:
Fresh Air from WHYY, July 6, 2006 · In his new book, Talking Right, linguist Geoff Nunberg examines the parlance of the American political right. Conservatives, Nunberg notes, have been remarkably effective at creating a language through which to convey their agenda. The subtitle of his book illustrates what he's getting at: "How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."
Nunberg, who teaches at the University of California-Berkeley, is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He is also the author of Going Nucular and The Way We Talk Now.
Partial excerpt from the Introduction of the book:
Signs and symbols, language, are the means of communication by which a fraternally shared experience is ushered in and sustained. But conversation has a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech. . . . That and only that gives reality to public opinion. —John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 1927
Are the Democrats simply tone deaf? That impression was hard to escape when the party floated a new slogan in the fall of 2005 that was aimed at the 2006 midterm elections: "Together, America can do better." Or more accurately, a newly augmented slogan—in 2004, John Kerry had used "America can do better," without the "together" part. According to the congressional newspaper The Hill, Democrats had chosen the slogan to address the party's "messaging problems" after testing it in focus groups along with a number of alternatives. "We know the majority of people agree with us on the issues," one Democrat was quoted as saying, "but this effort is an acknowledgment that we need to communicate better."
The response to the slogan was, to put it mildly, tepid. The Washington Post reported that Democratic governors were scoffing at it, and the liberal commentators excoriated it. "Pathetic," said Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker. And the Los Angeles Times's Rosa Brooks concurred: "'You can do better' is what you say to a dim child whose grades were even worse than expected. Is this really the Democrats' message to the nation: that we don't need to be quite as pathetic as we now are?" The blogger Wonkette was characteristically caustic: "Now we know where the Democrats stand," she said. "They stand for betterness." And indeed, the slogan seemed to epitomize Democrats' inability to come up with an overarching theme other than "Listen, anybody would be an improvement over this bunch of bozos." (Wonkette mused that the rejected slogans probably included "You Could Do Worse," "It's Not Like There's a Third Party," and "Sorry About That Kerry Thing.")