George Orwell claimed in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” that English was in a bad way: common consensus (which he was satirizing) held “that any struggle against the abuse of ...

Did John Kerry ever take a course in literary criticism? If he didn't, it might explain his presidential defeat. Because in "Unspeak," journalist Steven Poole makes a compelling case for the value of ...

Unspeak by Steven Poole 288pp, Little, Brown, £9.99 The use and abuse of words is an endlessly fascinating subject to anyone interested in communications, and the 30 pages' worth of reference notes - ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

In this collection of his language commentaries over the past half-decade, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg notes a few terms of slang that enjoy news-surges ("under the bus"), but generally discusses more ...