George Orwell claimed in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” that English was in a bad way: common consensus (which he was satirizing) held “that any struggle against the abuse of ...

Did John Kerry ever take a course in literary criticism? If he didn't, it might explain his presidential defeat. Because in "Unspeak," journalist Steven Poole makes a compelling case for the value of ...

Apparently, some governments, corporations and pressure groups try to avoid saying exactly what they mean. They use language selected for its favourable connotations and make determined efforts to ...

A Place for What We Lose: A Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake ...

In this collection of his language commentaries over the past half-decade, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg notes a few terms of slang that enjoy news-surges ("under the bus"), but generally discusses more ...