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 ...

Leonard Nimoy used to do the Vulcan mind-meld with his fingers spread on your face — my mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts — and just like that he had your secrets. Spooky. Beautiful, too ...

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 - ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...