Why is political debate conducted at such a low level these days? In Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics, former director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, suggests that politicians themselves (think of the “spin” industry surrounding Tony Blair’s administrations), the media, with its relentless 24-hour cycle of news and commentary, and the public at large, less subservient these days than in the past, have all contributed to the current crisis.
Thompson, (a Catholic, educated by Jesuits at Stonyhurst) makes a powerful plea to bring back the proper study of “rhetoric”, which he defines as “the study of the theory and practice of public language.” His guide is Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric, with its analysis of “ethos”, “pathos”, “exaggeration” and all the other linguistic elements that go into public speech-making.
