Semantics And The Cold War

Semantics and the Cold WarTalleyrand said, "Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts." This was the remark of a clever man. For men of less intelligence, it would be truer to say, "Speech was given to man to prevent thought." Language has been performing this disastrous function throughout all the controversies of the Cold War. How well it has done this is my theme in the present article.The general practice in Cold War controversies has been to choose pairs of words,...