Word: idiom
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...focus group of more or less undecided voters. Focus groups are a powerful political aphrodisiac: civilians tell the wizards how to rub them the right way. But they are also an insidious reversal of the political process, turning followers into leaders. Watching Hart, a pioneer and master of the idiom, trying to elicit responses from a surly group of citizens, I began to wonder whether focus groups have outlived their usefulness. The group was almost entirely predictable. They said Bush was a regular guy and Kerry seemed aloof. They said they wanted more specifics from the candidates and more high...
...While something as subjective and ethereal as a national soccer idiom may be by nature impossible defend in scientific terms, it nonetheless shaped the sensibilities of fans for generations. Whenever the fans of a lowly English outfit such as Bristol Rovers see their players exhibit a flash of uncharacteristic individual skill or imagination, they sing "Brazil, it's just like watching Brazil...
...Amateur sociologists liked to see in the national idiom a reflection of the stereotyped view of the national culture: German efficiency, the Churchillian fighting spirit of the British, the Afro-Latin rhythms of the Brazilian game. It was even suggested that the dinky size of Dutch living space made their soccer players more innately aware of space than most others (a theory which ought to make Japan a world-beater...
...club level, there's no longer a national idiom in the top tier. The teams are an assembly of global all-stars, as are the coaches, often. And while that has greatly enriched the spectacle of club level football in Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere, it's effect on the national game may be double edged. On the one hand, greater efficiency has facilitated more championships by Brazil and previously unthinkable success for such relative outsiders as Greece, South Korea or Senegal. The idea that "there are no longer any easy games" at international level has become a mantra among...
...problem isn't just that Dizzee's East London accent is thick, though it is. It's that Dizzee (ne Dylan Mills), 19, speaks in a tangled local idiom in which choppah means knife, chaps are chains and sket means slut. In Britain, where most rappers still spit moldy American hip-hop cliches, Dizzee is celebrated as a rap original. (Boy in Da Corner beat out albums by Radiohead and Coldplay for the country's prestigious Mercury Prize.) But American audiences--who get Dizzee's album on Jan. 20, six months after the Brits--have a right to ask: What...