Tag: Language

Suddenly, the term “spying” was declared as categorically exclusive of any intelligence surveillance. He explained that he did not just get the conclusions of Robert Mueller but that the basic findings had been disclosed weeks earlier. It did not matter that Rosenstein described the questioning of the intentions of Barr or the necessity for redactions as “completely bizarre” and that, in his view, Barr has been “as forthcoming as he can.” The narrative has continued unabated, and billionaire Tom Steyer has even funded a national commercial repeating how ridiculous it is that Barr could have determined the conclusions of the special counsel report in just two days. Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked why the attorney general was evidently looking into the basis for the secret investigation into the 2016 campaign. Barr explained that he was concerned about any kind of spying, foreign or domestic, on our political process. Indeed, Democrats and the media have used the terms interchangeably, until another language change was spontaneously declared this week. “Wiretapping” was previously often used as a generality for surveillance. The media discussed whether Trump was guilty of collusion, despite there being no such crime in the federal code. Speech codes are now common and the meaning of terms is based on how language is received rather than intended. In the same way, it does not matter that what Barr meant was reasonable or that he immediately clarified “wiretapping” as “improper surveillance.” It was important to portray as an absurdity any suggestion of the Obama administration spying on a Republican campaign, even though two key officials were targeted during the campaign.

New research from Europe has found that culturally liberal politicians use more complex language than their socially conservative counterparts. The findings have been published in the open-access scientific journal PLOS One. “Many have ridiculed Donald Trump for his use of simple language with low levels of linguistic complexity. They found that culturally liberal politicians tended to use more complex language in their speeches. “We find that speakers from culturally liberal parties use more complex language than speakers from culturally conservative parties. We find this evidence by analyzing 381,609 speeches given by politicians from five parliaments, by twelve European prime ministers, as well as speeches from party congresses over time and across countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden). “For instance, our scores show that former culturally liberal British Prime Minister Gordon Brown delivered speeches that were markedly more complex than his successor, the culturally conservative David Cameron.” “We saw the same thing in Spain, where the language used by liberal Prime Minister José Zapatero was much more complex than that of his successor, the conservative Mariano Rajoy,” Schoonvelde explained. First, it would be interesting to study the differences in language complexity by politicians of the same political party. Or do they do this because their language use actually reflects differences in the personality of these politicians,” Bakker said. The study, “Liberals lecture, conservatives communicate: Analyzing complexity and ideology in 381,609 political speeches”, was authored by Martijn Schoonvelde, Anna Brosius, Gijs Schumacher, Bert N. Bakker.

To cite words as the cause for violence eliminates the perpetrators' entire history and the many variables that brought them to their crimes. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well…

The law describes Hebrew as the "state's language", effectively prioritising it above Arabic which has for decades been recognised as an official language alongside Hebrew. In which other countries has the choice of language proved politically controversial? This Baltic state and former Soviet republic has a sizeable Russian-speaking minority, but the government recognises only Latvian as the official state language. The authorities also have plans to promote Latvian as the language of instruction in all secondary schools, although for the moment, teaching in Russian and other minority languages will still be allowed at primary-school level. After its independence in 1991, Croatia abolished the Cyrillic script, which had been used when Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia. Tamil Nadu - with its own ancient language and traditions - suffered riots over the issue. The central government continues to use English as well as Hindi for official purposes, and individual states have largely been left to decide their own language policy. Turkish is the only official language and there have long been restrictions on the Kurdish minority regarding the use of their language. Canada is officially bilingual, with the constitution stating that English and French have "equality of status" in all government institutions and the parliament. In 1974, Quebec made French the official language in the province.

A self-help book tells us that “buying or purchasing items can be understood as a metaphor for accepting uplifting beliefs about the self or circumstances ... consider ‘buying into’ thoughts and ideas to improve yourself, [such as] ‘I buy into the principle that abundant finances are good for me.’” A government official told The New York Times that the only way to make political change is to first gauge “the public buy-in” for reforms. If a fundamental belief in American goodness and effectiveness and power—the belief inherent in Marco Rubio’s “number one” answer to Kasky’s question, the enduring usability of the Constitution—could no longer be sustained, what could take its place? A belief in the market! Politically, we seem to have no real way, now, of asserting the value of a proposition—to defend it to the hilt—except for noting that it’s popular. Of course, we know, deep down, that just because lots of people support an idea doesn’t mean it’s right. And just because lots of people support an idea doesn’t mean, as Adam Smith noted, that they are doing what’s most reasonable, nor even that their personal reasons are clear-cut. After the town hall, Rubio defended himself further on Twitter: “Banning all semi-auto weapons may have been popular with the audience at #CNNTownHall, but it is a position well outside the mainstream,” he insisted. That would make the world, to the left, comprehensible, instead of peopled by a whole bunch of voters whose consumer choices on the political marketplace appear not only incomprehensible, but, more importantly, reprehensible. The entire town hall exchange was heartbreaking. I’d ask whether Rubio’s would have been, too.