Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language
by Don Watson
On This Page
Description
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 show more 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 u 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 u and their users u who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentence is a small book of profound weight u and timeliness. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Started out very well, was engaging, amusing and very interesting however at about the two thirds mark I began getting bogged. I finished reading by skimming and still rate it a good book. Don Watson puts forward an excellent case for the death of good language in public speaking, public print media and much of today's conversation, personally I'd have enjoyed it far more in shorter format.
Sub-titled - the decay of public language. Great content but no structure. You could start at any point, read to the end, go back to the start and do it all over again.
Read Feb 2005
Read Feb 2005
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
18+ Works 1,706 Members
Don Watson was born in 1949 in Australia. He is an author and public speaker. He took his undergraduate degree at La Trobe University and a PhD at Monash University and was for ten years an academic historian. He wrote three books on Australian history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing political show more satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the Premier of Victoria, John Cain. In 1992 he became Prime Minister of Australia Paul Keating's speech-writer and adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, won both The Age Book of the Year and non-fiction Prizes, the Brisbane Courier Mail Book of the Year, the National Biography Award and the Australian Literary Studies Association's Book of the Year. His 2001 Quarterly Essay, Rabbit Syndrome: Australia and America won the inaugural Alfred Deakin Prize in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Death Sentence was a best seller and won the Australian Booksellers Association Book of the Year. In 2015 his title, The Bush, won the Indie Book of the Year, the Book of the Year at the 2015 New South Wales Premier Literary Awards, and The Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction. His 2016 Quarterly Essay, Enemy Within: American Politics in the Time of Trump is on the bestsellers list. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2003
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 427.994 — Language English & Old English languages Historical and geographic variations, modern nongeographic variations of English Geographic variations Geographic variations in Australasia, Pacific Ocean islands, Atlantic Ocean islands, Arctic islands, Antarctica, extraterrestrial worlds Geographic variations in Australia
- LCC
- PE1460 .W325 — Language and Literature English language English Modern English
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 599
- Popularity
- 48,643
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.40)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 2
