I heard an interview recently with Frank Luntz, the Republican language maestro who uses polling and focus groups to advise political candidates, organizations, and corporations on how to choose their words and frame their issues for the highest political impact. He’s got a new book called Words that work : it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. He has recommended that organizations use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”, “gaming” instead of “gambling”, and “death tax” instead of “inheritance tax” or “estate tax”. You might be able to still hear the interview here. Here’s the web site of Luntz’s research company. There are also some short articles by Luntz in Lexis Nexis Academic(sorry, can’t give you the direct links to the articles, LNA doesn’t enable that). In a Dec. 28, 2002 NTY article, Luntz describes how he was an advisor to TV’s “West Wing” for a while, giving direction on the script from a Republican point of view. The job didn’t last, evidently.

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to read the Luntz book along with books by linguists (academics) whose work has been associated with liberal causes, Geoffrey Nunberg and Georg Lakoff. Nunberg does a regular spot on Fresh Air, the NPR interview show. Temple has quite a few books by both authors. Nunberg’s most recent book is Talking right : how conservatives turned liberalism into a tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show (Paley doesn’t have a copy of this, have to correct this). Lakoff’s most recent book is Whose freedom? : the battle over America’s most important idea.

And of course there’s George Orwell’s famous Politics and the English Language, written in 1946.

—Fred Rowland