ABSTRACT
The language seeks to create a temporary and very friendly community, against the odds. Christian names are obligatory. Hospital language is a good example, the old-fashioned Marshall and Snelgrove kindly gentility of the wards. Language is always being corrupted, though in different ways at different times; contemporary corruptions come more than anything from the wide-openness of this world. The whole process is made more difficult by the fact that the particular languages we each inherit act themselves as controls on consciousness; they prompt required attitudes and inhibit those less acceptable to the culture; and it all then seems like ‘common sense’ and ‘plain talking’; always and everywhere. The more explicitly ideological habits in language are more toughly pushed; listen only to the way ‘empowerment’ is used. The language of the Arts and Entertainment Training Council seminar and of its publications was entirely predictable.
