Series commissioned by the Guardian's 'Mind your language' blog in the run-up to the 2015 UK General Election
By condemning the commonplace metaphor, the Plain English Campaign betrays a lack of sensitivity to the power of everyday language (20.12.2010)
There comes a time when you have to accept that some usages are dying or dead. We should focus our efforts on the living (11.02.2011)
The revolution in our understanding of metaphor which started in the late 1970s was Copernican in scale. It overturned the idea that metaphorical language was aberrant and out of the ordinary and placed it firmly at the centre of our conceptual universe. But even today – some forty years later – the idea can be baffling when you encounter it for the first time.
For centuries, speechwriters have been viewed with suspicion. We’re regarded as the used car salesmen of the English language usage world because we specialize in the darkest of linguistic arts: rhetoric, the art of persuasion.
For centuries, speechwriters have been viewed with suspicion. We’re regarded as the used car salesmen of the English language usage world because we specialize in the darkest of linguistic arts: rhetoric, the art of persuasion.
In this ‘Time To Shine’ podcast, host Oscar Santolalla invites Martin to talk about why he believes cartoon thinking is essential for communicators.
The first speech we worked on with Dr Clare Gerada made headlines the following day. The controversial Health and Social Care Bill was in progress, and as the new Chair of the RCGP, Clare warned her colleagues that the proposed changes would turn GPs into "rationers" of health care – which threatened to break the bond of trust between doctors and patients.