Photo: Robert Perry/Getty Images, Photo-Illustration by The Conversation
How politicians have cynically used metaphor to imply meaning through language.
When politicians swear we might think they’re simply overcome with emotion. But there’s often more going on behind the language they use.
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Politicians dropping the f-bomb tend to be seen as acting out of emotion, but the way we use taboo language is often about what we can accomplish by violating rules.
Doctors protest against what they see as the Conservative Party’s push to privatise the health service.
Isabel Infantes/PA
One side wants to ‘get Brexit done’ while the other shouts the ‘NHS is not for sale!’. What does it all really mean?
Fighting talk: Johnson warms up for his Conservative Party speech.
PA/Stefan Rousseau
A look at his published writing shows the prime minister has ramped up the rhetoric as Brexit has approached.
‘Candidate’ has its roots in the word ‘candid’, to be frank. It’s hard not to believe that we’ve strayed a little from those noble aspirations.
Cesare Maccari/Wikimedia Commons
Many of the most commonly used election terms have a long linguistic history, stretching from ancient Rome to modern-day America and Australia.
In the past 20 years, budget speeches have been delivered in increasingly less complex language.
AAP/Lukas Coch
We all know about the ‘jobs and growth’, but there was also ‘tax’ and various forms of ‘new’ – read innovation – in this year’s federal budget.
Liberalism means something completely different in South Africa compared with the US and UK, and has racist connotations.
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Liberalism is a dirty word for the majority of South Africans. This goes back to early colonialism. Liberals opposed apartheid but not the close relationship between capitalism and apartheid.