A different kind of language in times of coronavirus
April 9, 2020
This is just a quick note on the language used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak in his speech on 8 April, 2020 on economic support for the charity sector, at the daily press conference at Downing Street. It starts with the well-rehearsed statements to which we have all become accustomed. It wishes …
Promises, promises, promises
December 28, 2017
It all started with this tweet – a conversation between Oliver Morton, Jack Stilgoe and David Keith about the hopes and fears related to geoengineering. In this conversation, they stumbled against the words ‘promise’ and ‘promising’, with Oliver and Keith interpreting them in terms of ordinary language use, while Jack interpreted them also in terms …
AMR and the ‘rhetoric of resistance’
September 21, 2016
Today Helen Lambert, the ESRC‘s AMR champion, posted a blog post under the title ‘Rhetoric of resistance‘ on the AMR Social Science Champion Blog ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (UNGA) meeting about which she also tweeted during the day. “The primary objective of the meeting is to summon and maintain strong …
Are they really climate deniers? Closing down debate in science and politics.
March 9, 2013
Just had an interesting back and forth with Vanessa Heggie about ‘what to call climate deniers/sceptics’? At the bottom of her excellent post on ‘how to debate with sceptics’, Vanessa wonders whether ‘denier‘ or ‘sceptic‘ is the right word to use around climate change. This was a handy reminder that, although I read stuff on …