The Rhetoric of the Right: Language Change and the Spread of the Market: 147 (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics) - Hardcover

George, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415679974 ISBN 13: 9780415679978

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

This study seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which changes in the language associated with economic issues are reflective of a gradual but quantifiable conservative ideological shift.

In this rigorous analysis, David George uses as his data a century of word usage within The New York Times, starting in 1900. It is not always obvious how the changes identified necessarily reflect a stronger prejudice toward laissez-faire free market capitalism, and so much of the book seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which the changing language indeed carries with it a political message. This analysis is made through exploration of five major areas of focus: "economics rhetoric" scholarship and the growing "behavioral economics" school of thought; the discourse of government and taxation; the changing meaning of "competition," and "competitive"; changing attitudes toward labor; and the celebration of growth relative to the decline in attention to economic justice and social equality.

About this title

About the Author

David George is Professor of Economics at La Salle University, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415679974
• ISBN 13: 9780415679978
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176