Word: verbalism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Against the Grain. However, De Gaulle's prognostications are often more successful than his policies. Two years ago, in hope of establishing Franco-German dominance in European affairs, De Gaulle signed his treaty of cooperation with Bonn. In practice, the entente has been mostly verbal: the Germans have refused to cooperate in joint weapons production, want no part of De Gaulle's incipient nuclear force, and have further provoked le grand Charles by enthusiastically endorsing U.S. plans for the mixed-manned NATO surface fleet, MLF, which Paris ridicules as the force de farce...
Lewis' speech, entitled "Words and Music," pointed out the difficulties of creating a simple lyric today. The British poet suggested that writing words for music can help by "clearing away much of the verbal undergrowth." The music can be a "cover for the simplicity of the words," Lewis explained...
...their politics as urbane and fairminded. In large measure, they are. But at times the heirs of Cromwell and Pitt are apt to be more virulent than the heirs of Jackson and Truman. British political leaders can deftly cut each other's throats with the most brutal verbal slashes, and British political crowds can raise the fine democratic art of heckling to riotous dimensions. This happened once again in the windup of Britain's election campaign, suggesting that beneath the initially apathetic contest there was really a good deal of passion...
Phrases such as "Peace in our time" and "Prosperity is just around the corner" invoke "word magic," as linguists call verbal formulas that promise to make dreams come true through sheer repetition. On the other hand, observes San Francisco State College's S. I. Hayakawa, a pioneering U.S. semanticist. "You don't move a mass society with a volume by Galbraith." Particularly in the U.S., as Cambridge Historian Denis Brogan has pointed out, "the evocative power of verbal symbols must not be despised, for these are and have been one of the chief means of uniting the United...
...psychologists, a slogan should express a single idea in seven words or less. "It is a psychological fact," says Harvard's Gordon Allport, "that seven is the normal limit of rote memory." (Example: telephone numbers.) Whether plugging cat food or a candidate, sloganeers lean heavily on such verbal devices as alliteration ("Korea, Communism, Corruption"), rhyme ("All the way with L.B.J."), or a combination of both ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too").* Other familiar standbys are paradox ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself"), metaphor ("Just the kiss of the hops"), metonymy ("The full dinner pail"), parody (a Norwegian travel folder...