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SubscriptionsCategory: Language
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Just Another ‘C’ Word? The Weird, Wonderful and Worrisome History of Cripple
Penny Pepper explores how she encourages disabled people to reclaim labels – to twist and refute them
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The Upside Down: Homo Loquens – Why We Learned to Talk
It’s not hard to see how the evolution of cooperation and the evolution of language are mutually reinforcing, writes John Mitchinson
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Irony: The Velvet Glove of Colonialism?
Did the Greeks invent irony? Rahila Gupta makes the case for Britain’s mastery and ownership of the device
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Putin’s Real War and His War of Words
Sian Norris considers Martha Gellhorn’s classic 1966 examination of propaganda, Real War And War Of Words, and updates it for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
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Swarms, Floods, Invasions: Triggering the Fear of Refugees
Anneke Campbell – Boris Johnson’s cousin – explores how ‘culture wars’ aim to demonise and divide and how their language is key
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Attack Journalism Is Old News
As Prince Harry calls out the British press for its cultures of attack, Dr Bethany Usher explores the history of journalism targeting specific individuals and how we might spot and counter it
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The Media’s Selective Policing of ‘Sleaze’
Mic Wright explores the erratic approach of certain outlets to stories of corruption and wrongdoing
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KAnon: How I Almost Became a Kinder Conspiracist
During lockdown, Keith Kahn-Harris discovered a strange anomaly inside Kinder Surprise Eggs, and almost began to uncover a vast corporate conspiracy…
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Matt Hancock Sleeps with the Fishes…
Mic Wright on Boris Johnson’s obsession with The Godfather, and why director Francis Ford Coppola decried him for bringing “the beloved United Kingdom to ruin”
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Watch Your Tone! How Women MPs of Colour are Tone-Policed
n the same week that Dawn Butler was expelled from the House of Commons, MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan was ‘tone-policed’ by a white MP – and not for the first time. Sian Norris analyses a worrying trend
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Tackling Islamophobia in ‘Terrorism’ Won’t happen by Sticking the Label On More White Perpetrators
Government policy around counter-terrorism and programmes such as Prevent, not just media coverage, must be examined to shift damaging narratives around Islam in Britain
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Selective Terrorism: By Refusing to Call White Supremacist Killers ‘Terrorists’, the Media Furthers its Aim of Demonising Muslims
A new report shows there can be no excuses for journalists, says Brian Cathcart: if Al Qaeda was ‘terror’, then so were the Christchurch killings and the murder of Jo Cox
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Johnson’s Crackdown on ‘Criminal Gangs’ Masks the UK’s Shameful Lack of Civilisation and Humanity
The UK Government is deploying legal dupery to criminalise vulnerable asylum seekers while taking the moral high ground, argues Amina Shareef
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Fatal Vagueness: These Three-Word Slogans Will Be the Death Of Us
Alex Andreou dissects how the Vote Leave Government’s latest hollow message around the Coronavirus is devoid of any real meaning and betrays the contempt it holds the British public in
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Revealed: Boris Johnson’s Hidden History of Islamophobia
Iggy Ostanin unearths troubling new evidence of anti-Muslim racism in a rediscovered personal blog of Britain’s Prime Minister
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Government Resumes Business As Usual with Benefits ‘Blame and Shame’ Game
Mary O’Hara explains what the Government’s announcement that benefits sanctions will be reinstated after a COVID-19 hiatus reveals about its whole approach to poverty
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The Coronavirus Crisis: Will Our COVID-19 Lockdown Make Us think More About Why We Imprison So Many People?
Duncan Campbell discusses how the words ‘lockdown’ and ‘stir-crazy” were an all too familiar reality for a section of our society long before the Coronavirus pandemic appeared.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Mongrel Tongue – Is English Really So Special?
John Mitchinson on why we should celebrate the success of the flexibility of the English language which enables its richness.
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Speaking Another Language: A Social Media Tale
Otto English takes us on a journey through the history of the English language, the exceptionalism of Empire and the furious and curious of Twitter.
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Why Are We So Quiet About Language Death?
John Mitchinson on why biodiversity helps explain why we are all impoverished by the loss of languages.
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How Politicians Talk To You: Oven-Ready Rhetoric during the General Election
Luke Murphy dissects the slogans of the General Election 2019 and what they reveal about class, empire, royalty and racism in Britain today.
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WORD OF THE WEEK: hugger-mugger
(n.) secrecy, concealment; (adj., adv.) clandestine, hidden from view Rely solely on the headlines and you’d be forgiven for thinking not much of any consequence has happened this week, save for two former Labour MPs endorsing Boris Johnson in the upcoming December election. It’s true, Ian Austen and John Woodcock’s words were hardly beneficial to…
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WORD OF THE WEEK: undermimic
(v.) to fall short in replicating something already done by someone else Well, well, well. He’s only gone and done it. Apparently. After a week of frantic into-the-night renegotiations, a plume of white smoke finally puffed its way up from the Brussels skyline early Thursday morning. Rumour has it, from a burning pile of three…
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Big Boris and Brexit Doublespeak Surround Us – Where Does the Truth Lie?
Otto English considers how we have entered into an Orwellian world in which Brexit governs all and its supporters attempt to convince us daily that night is day and day is night.
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WORD OF THE WEEK: Scowth
scowth (n.) a period of time off from work; scope or freedom to focus on other things
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WORD OF THE WEEK: public house bargain
public house bargain (n.) a poor or unprofitable bargain; a questionable deal For the past several weeks, it has seemed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s approach to the on-going Brexit negotiations has been to keep his cards close to his chest, and then at the very last moment reveal that he wasn’t ever actually holding…
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WORK OF THE WEEK: Ettercapped
(adj.) bitten by a spider They say heroes come in all shapes and sizes. If you support Brexit, for example, your current hero likely comes in the form of the glabrous Machiavelli currently working the gears of 10 Downing Street—and whose supposed reputation for political shrewdness belies the fact that he’s now engineered the government’s…
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WORD OF THE WEEK: seagull manager
seagull manager (n.) an overseer who arrives, ruins everything, then departs without fixing it Two former UK Prime Ministers stepped back into the political limelight this week. One is a level-headed, fiercely pro-European, and still highly respected statesman, who has boldly used his platform to wade into the on-going High Court battle over Boris Johnson’s…
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WORD OF THE WEEK: Scofflaw
(n.) someone who treats the law with contempt; someone who deliberately flouts rules that are difficult to enforce
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WORD OF THE WEEK: corbie-messenger
(n.) a messenger who arrives too late to be of use, or not at all
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PESSIMISM IS FOR LIGHTWEIGHTS: Celebrating Others
Salena Godden with an excerpt from the new book Others, published by Unbound, about her sister Jo-Ann who has Williams Syndrome. Others is published this week. This tremendous anthology celebrates how words can take us out of the selves we inhabit and show us the world as others see it. Fiction writers and poets make…
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Odeon of Death Review of the Week: Old Mr Corbyn’s Fudge Shop
The Odeon of Death takes a look at the week’s events through the medium of cinema.
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Watching the Apocalypse? Turn off the TV and Find a Better Ending
Salena Godden’s fourth episode of ‘Pessimism is for Lightweights’ warns of the dangers of too much bad news and the need for hope.
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WORD OF THE WEEK: caciquism
(n.) political bossism; a political system in which one powerful figure wields considerable power or influence The first is that it could win you a game of Scrabble one day. In 1982, a professional player named Karl Khoshaw played caziques (an official alternative spelling caciques) in an international Scrabble tournament and, with a score of…
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WORD OF WEEK: mebby-scales
(n.) a state of indecision, wavering between two opinions or options If last week’s EU election results taught us anything, it’s that the UK is still as divided as ever. On the one hand, Remainers claimed the biggest victory of the night: add up the votes for all those parties overtly calling for the 2016…
