language

use, misuse and cynical manipulation of language in common and specialist speech and writing

Who moved that apostrophe?

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I’m a week late, I know, but Helen’s Mother’s Day piece got me thinking. How did a day that grew from West Virginian Mothers’ Work Days from 1858 onwards (where mothers worked together to improve their community), and Mothers’ Friendship… Read More ›

Breaking rules since 1963

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Apparently, even before his birth, my nickname not only broke all the rules of tig but my very existence as a tigtog supports the exploitation of Elijah Wood’s trusting nature. Who knew? “No, Elijah, you can’t tig on a tog,… Read More ›

Get a bloody move on

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Listening to Richard Glover on ABC702 this afternoon, I heard a poem I hadn’t heard for years, “The Australaise”. My dad read it to me long ago. By CJ Dennis, it was entered, tongue I imagine firmly in cheek, for… Read More ›

High-school homophobia

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So my son, who turns 13 in a few months, started in high-school last week. This week, a class was disrupted when the teacher left for five minutes and a scuffle broke out between two boys. One boy had been… Read More ›

BushCospeak = Doublespeak

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Salman Rushdie succinctly skewers deceptive abuse of language: BEYOND any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was “extraordinary rendition”. To those of us who love words, this phrase’s brutalisation of meaning is… Read More ›