Word: unspeakably
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...crisis was aggravated by 20th century history. In public life, totalitarianism has corrupted language by its tendency, as Steiner puts it, to "unspeak the actual past" while conjugating its verbs only in the "depersonalized present" and "Utopian future." In private life, Steiner claims, people have come to speak more and say less. He cites studies of urban phone calls that indicate "a drastic diminution and standardization of vocabulary and syntax." He observes that "quiet is becoming the prerogative of a sheltered elite or the cage of the desolate...
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