“A perceptive and disturbing book …. Our inability to use language articulately has consequences beyond aesthetics, says Shachtman. It threatens the survival of democracy ….. Loss of analytic capacity makes us easy prey for Big Brother and his Orwellian gang.” — Washington Post Book World
Originally published in 1995, THE INARTICULATE SOCIETY: ELOQUENCE AND CULTURE IN AMERICA has been reissued in paperback because of continued interest in the book and its subject — articulate behavior. As with RUMSPRINGA, it has become a favorite of book clubs seeking good topics for discussions. Here’s why, in a review from the American Library Association:
“People talk more and say less, and that summarizes Shachtman’s wide-ranging analysis of the verbal ineptitude that television so obviously fosters. But he doesn’t saddle the tube with sole responsibility for ineloquence. It more abets than causes the crisis, which emanates from deeper problems, such as the mass appetite for witless entertainment in talk shows, sitcoms, or action movies. Trenchant examples of disjointed, muddled speech overlay the scholarly linguistic theories that Shachtman explains, making this a rich warning about the ever-growing impoverishment of public rhetoric.”
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