Posts Tagged ‘casual’

’60s American culture altered communication

Thursday, March 11th, 2004

When did the term “rhetoric” become an insult? When did the word cease to mean artfully crafted speech and start to convey scorn, as it does when we hear a campaign speech and mutter, “That’s just rhetoric”?
The answer is 1965, says John McWhorter in his recent book, “Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language [...]

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