There’s a special kind of language that doesn’t tell you what’s happening—it tells you what to feel about it. It’s an art form, really. A performance where words pretend to inform but actually sedate. Bureaucrats, generals, and “information managers” have refined it into a linguistic ballet: graceful, bloodless, and utterly lethal to thought.
It’s called doublespeak. Or, in the more poetic tongues of the East, necro-speak—the language of the … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
Bruegel’s ‘Tower of Babel’
Content 18+ My Budapest-based friend and colleague Artem (I refer to him so much you might think he is just my alter-ego or imaginary friend like a teddy bear or ghost in the forest) shared the following information with me recently:
“My gym trainer told me that English is a language of idiots as it is very … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ A long time ago I had the pleasure of reading George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.” It’s still considered such a classic that it remains anthologized and I have brought it to the attention of many of my students. Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm if you –I shudder to think – have never heard of him or his books) in … Read the rest
Age restriction 18+ Way back in the day, when I lived in the redneck burgh of Jacksonville, Florida, there was an agency which hired day-laborers to supply the city’s many construction companies. These building sites were always short of reliable help, and basically, they just needed a few extra bodies to shovel the shit.
Such “immediate employment” offices were scattered here and there throughout Yahooville (I don’t mean the internet, … Read the rest
