The English of politics

The English of politics is artificial, pompous, never fresh and vivid. Taking George Orwell's definition, it is a "mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence", it is "the defence of the indefensible", addressing certain events without suggesting mental pictures of them. Orwell’s negative view on politics has been prophetic: during the last decades words like "politics" and "politician" have been classified among the English words carrying the most negative connotations. Writing a political speech, and reading it aloud, is a delicate issue: it must convince people to support one party and its leader rather than its opponents. Political discourse thus envisages a direct relationship between the main exponent of a political movement and the audience, a dialogue starting on the part of one organization and provoking responses from others. This book analyses the way in which English permeates politics and how politicians use political discourse at elections time.