Word: decays
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...there are no surprises either. How could there be? These are the handful of poems that Auden wrote between the time he went back to England after 31 years in the New World and the time of his death. It is the familiar, autumnal Auden speaking: student of fleshly decay, writer of thank-you notes, urbane scold, expert at anamnesis, a celebrator of the numinous past that raises nostalgia almost to the level of ritual...
Unfortunately, after this promising start in the introduction at ripping the veil off the underlying structural causes of language's decay, Strictly Speaking falls prey to the very deficiency it is describing: it is written in such a comical, anything-for-a-laugh-at-all-those-illiterate-people tone that all analysis is obscured. Instead of learning the realtionship between social transformations and the way people talk, we are told reporters are too self-important, politicians too aftaid of being spontaneous, social scientists too attached to impressive-sounding jargon. As for the common, non-proffessional man, well, he comes across...
...political but literary; Newman is unable to tolerate the untidiness caused by the social changes of the last decade. For Newman, like Arnold, there are two real classes: those who know, and those who don't. For all his insight into the relationship of Watergate and America's literary decay, Newman remains oblivious to the fact that the distinction between the educated elite and the uneducated masses is an arbitrary one which the social movements of the '60s that affected language sought to eradicate. Social change will invariably take its toll on language; judgement on the way people speak...
Physicists have already discovered some 200 elementary particles, usually by smashing apart nuclei of atoms in huge accelerators. Most of the particles live for only a tiny fraction of a second before they decay into more stable atomic components Like electrons. Until now, all of these particles have occupied predictable places in what physicists jocularly call their subnuclear "zoo." The puzzling new discovery is a total misfit...
...Graduate Economics Club recommendation that students be included in the hiring process is the first clear demand, supported by official evidence of a department in decay, that students be recognized not as irresponsible transients or radical ogres, but as individuals with the right and the capacity to positively affect the decisions determining their education and four to six years of their lives. It was the students who pointed out the failings of the Economics Department, not the Faculty. And it was the students whom the visiting committee report agreed with...