Part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia’s public language, Don Watson’s Death Sentence is scathing, funny and brilliant.
‘ ... in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.’
Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politicians – speak to each other and to us in cliched, impenetrable, lifeless sludge.
Don Watson can bear it no longer. In Death Sentence, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words – and their users – who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentence is a small book of profound weight – and timeliness.
"Watson makes an eloquent, elegant, and sometimes scathing case for taking back language from those who would strip it of all color and emotion and, therefore, of all meaning." - Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
"many lessons and insights in this book" - Leigh Buchanan, Harvard Business Review
"[Watson is] always clear and precise, even when exposing the verbal pollution that passes for wisdom in the public realm." - Toronto Star
"Don Watson has written a fine and necessary book. Any citizen who neglects to read it does so at his or her peril." - Lewis H Lapham, Harper's Magazine
"[a] marvelous polemic..." - forbes.com
"Captures the powerlessness and frustration we feel when confronted by meaningless words delivered with authority." - Los Angeles Times Book Review
From website - RANDOM HOUSE BOOKS
Last edited by Fantome; 23rd Aug 2012 at 03:43.