To Oleh's point -- the best article to read on language and politics by Orwell is his article in 1946 - "Politics and the English Language," which is even more true today then in 46 - since at that point, most politicians, at least in theory - understood good rhetoric, a strong argument, and reason. Today that is not the case. The link to it is here: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
As to the "The American People This/That" : to Politicians as "The user" is to Developers - this is problematic - at best. Developers, at the end of the day, really want to build great products to solve real needs - and their very job description is to 'build something.,' else they get fired and end up becoming product managers or recruiters. Politicians are not paid to solve real problems, and they are not fired if they fail to solve problems, and the only reason they use those words is to increase the likelihood of maximizing their own benefit - which is to get elected. They may spend a lot of money on user (electorate) research, develop complicated and complete personas - but the goal of the research is to gain a complete understanding of consumer pain points, and their product is a speech, the success of the product is getting elected/re-elected, not actually solving the needs of the electorate. In a quasi/semi/pseudo capitalistic society (like the US) - the goal of for-profit companies may be to maximize profits by creating products the consumer wants which is perceived as being in cost equal to the marginal benefit the consumer derives (Drucker refutes this by saying the purpose is not to maximize profits, but to create customers). In this same system, the politicians goal is not to maximize profits by serving the electorate - it's to maximize power and influence. -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 || [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Oleh Kovalchuke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is a wealth of literature on Orwellian "newspeak". For well-reasoned > opinion look up books by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. > > Here, for example, Chomsky discusses two ideas of "democracy" (similar to > the notion of "American people"): > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doDKkiQejC0. > > Twain's, Orwell's and Huxley's classic books are also educational (look up > Orwell's essay on English language). > > Oleh > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
