Death Sentence: The Decay Of Public Language

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $19.98 AUD
  • : Random House Australia
  • : Vintage (Australia)
  • : 9781740512787
  • :
  • : 01 September 2004
  • : 0.144
  • :
  • : 199mm X 129mm X 14mm
  • : Australia
  • : 24.99
  • : games

Special Fields

  • :
Barcode 9781740512787
9781740512787

Description

' ...in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.' Don Watson Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politicians uaspeak to each other and to us in clich'd, impenetrable, lifeless sludge. Don Watson can bear it no longer. In DEATH SENTENCE, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words uaand their users uawho kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, DEATH SENTENCE is a small book of profound weight uaand timeliness.

Awards

Winner of Nielsen BookData/ABA Book of the Year Award - Booksellers' Choice 2003.

Acknowledgement of country

The Bundjalung of Byron Bay Arakwal People have lived in the coastal landscape around Byron Bay for at least 22,000 years.We acknowledge and show respect for the original people on the land on which we are based.  We respectfully acknowledge the ancient cultural presence in the Australian landscape by First Nation peoples and their ongoing traditional and spiritual custodianship of the marine areas, beaches, bush, rivers, lakes and mountains.