The Rhetoric of the Right: Language Change and the Spread of the Market

The Rhetoric of the Right: Language Change and the Spread of the Market
ISBN-10
1136245081
ISBN-13
9781136245084
Category
Business & Economics
Pages
202
Language
English
Published
2012-10-12
Publisher
Routledge
Author
David George

Description

This study seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which changes in the language associated with economic issues are reflective of a gradual but quantifiable conservative ideological shift. In this rigorous analysis, David George uses as his data a century of word usage within The New York Times, starting in 1900. It is not always obvious how the changes identified necessarily reflect a stronger prejudice toward laissez-faire free market capitalism, and so much of the book seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which the changing language indeed carries with it a political message. This analysis is made through exploration of five major areas of focus: "economics rhetoric" scholarship and the growing "behavioral economics" school of thought; the discourse of government and taxation; the changing meaning of "competition," and "competitive"; changing attitudes toward labor; and the celebration of growth relative to the decline in attention to economic justice and social equality.

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