Wednesday 18 August 2021

the politics of language

There is clearly a lot of clever use of language in politics:

Jay Doubleyou: disinformation and Jay Doubleyou: information wars and Jay Doubleyou: fake news

Jay Doubleyou: political narratives 

Jay Doubleyou: populism and The Populist Curtain - Poland and Hungary - BBC Sounds

Jay Doubleyou: culture wars and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED Talk and BBC Radio 4 - The Briefing Room, Why Did People Vote Leave?

Jay Doubleyou: the psychology of lies and why we fall for them and Jay Doubleyou: the psychology of lies and why we fall for them 

Jay Doubleyou: education levels and voting trump and Jay Doubleyou: brexit, trump and dumbing down and Jay Doubleyou: the language of donald trump 

Donald Trump Speaks at a Fourth-Grade Level - YouTube and This linguist studied the way Trump speaks for two years. Here’s what she found. - YouTube

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On the other hand, you would think that there's nothing 'political' about 'language' - but there's a lot.

First, what defines a 'native speaker'?

Jay Doubleyou: what's a 'native speaker' of english? part two

Do you have to be white to be an English native speaker?

Jay Doubleyou: what is a 'native speaker' of english? the issue of race...

Jay Doubleyou: challenging white supremacism in australia and new zealand

Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism - YouTube

But with the dominance of English, local languages are in danger:

On the one hand, English has opened the doors to great job mobility in the past decade and much economic success. In a country of so many varied languages, English is the only linguistic commonality. Yet as the language increasingly becomes the de facto mother tongue in urban families, many are dismayed at the trend, contending that its rampant use will strip them of their sense of Indian-ness.
“English is unifying us with the rest of the world but alienating us from our familial and cultural roots,” says Mr. Nagaraj, who still turns to Kannada metaphors when he needs to drive home a point.

Jay Doubleyou: what is a 'native speaker' of english?

There is a project set up by National Geographic:

Saving the World's Dying and Disappearing Languages

About | National Geographic Society

Dying Languages | National Geographic - YouTube

Some countries have suppressed the non-official languages:

Language policy in France - Wikipedia

Francization - Wikipedia

Bavarian language - Wikipedia

List of endangered languages in Europe - Wikipedia

Then there is sexism in language:

Jay Doubleyou: how language shapes the way we think

And  then there is the whole are of how we teach languages - and the politics of that:

Jay Doubleyou: can children teach themselves - using technology?

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