Political language

[Jonathan Lighter]

Re: Gov. Palin's resignation statement.

Quitting. That's bad.

"Pass[ing] the ball so the team can win."
That's good.

"Pass[ing] the ball--for victory."
GOOOOOOOOOOAALLL!

(While "passing the torch" might seem "good" to the naive, it carries
negative suggestions of retiring from the public eye.)

JL



On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET>
> Subject:      Political language
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Interesting piece on NPR this morning, of which I heard only a fragment, =
> about the effects of how a particular policy is termed.  Nothing new =
> about this, of course.:
>
> some examples:=20
>
> "War on Terror" (old)  vs. "Overseas Contingency Operations (new)
>
> "Special interests" (bad) vs.  "Stakeholders"  (good)
>
> "Enhanced interrogation techniques" (Cheney) vs. "Torture" (Obama)
>
>
> Bill Palmer
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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