Words of Mouth, Words Apart

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09yddxh

Points:

• Rise of the internet has led to a huge increase in political discussion - social media campaigns can swing elections and increase partisan dealignment
• Inclusive use of 'we' in papers- sometimes this is 'we the newspaper' and sometimes it is 'we the people' - both can obscure individuality, either for the public or for the writers
• Passive 'it is said that' or 'people say that' - a device that never states who is actually saying that but makes people believe that it is a popular opinion
• Imperatives and dropping of auxiliaries - leaves no room for doubt
• Two types of truth - sincerity and accuracy - sincerity is now valued more - 'we feel passionate about it' encourages people to share n the passion and does not necessarily include accuracy
• Donald Trump - use of emotion makes people listen - 'So take America' is not necessarily grammatically correct but is sincere
• Language relies on image and fantasy - the reader needs to be able to meet the writer halfway and understand what they are saying that they can visualise it
• In political discussion, we don't necessarily just have a range of opinions to create better democracy but also a different way of framing words to influence people
• Double meanings/the frame of reference - 'the chess pieces moved' can either mean the chess pieces have moved around the board or that the board has been taken to another room - can often be up to interpretation and may require context
• People often argue over a representation or assumption over what someone said 
• YouTube videos and people's preference for being able to see the person talking - the role of language is to create other worlds 
• The internet - 'a globalised village' - has all the issues of the globe and also all the issues of the village and how villagers often find rumours and gossip more interesting than real life
• Rhetoric used by female PMs is often trying to cover up her gender and seeming more manly - Thatcher's 'wets' and 'dries' and not wanting to be seen as 'wet' - May's 'hard Brexit' that is trying to make it seem more robust but actually came from porn
• Separating description and evaluation - does the word 'salty' describe something or evaluate how you feel about it as it is often used in the context of something being 'too salty'? - Is 'hard Brexit' describing a certain aspect of Brexit or evaluating it's strength
• There is an idea that language has gained some invisibility - we don't always realise what it is doing
• Children books - trying to sound more emotional - not just fact but imagination 
• Advertisements - 'borrowing' aspects of people's lives to make the product appeal more - e.g. applying a bag of chips to a family dinner 
• We are all treated as consumers to a dominant medium (the computer or media) - we are not asked to question or interrogate it, just identify with it
• 'Data' - often seen as information but it is actually only information when you can transform it or use it, it is only ever data if it is evidence for a hypothesis but people now see it as simple information. The idea of using the word neutrally is dangerous as data is supposed to give people something
• Individualism means people are 'rampaging' through social media spreading their own independent thoughts, thinking they're using the correct language