Books about words, writing, and the history and geography of language are in abundance this autumn, which seems fitting in these Orwellian times.
Simon Lancaster’s You Are Not Human (Biteback, £12.99) is a fascinating study of the effect of metaphor; how connecting an event, place, or people with a picture, however illusory, can dictate the nature of its impact. His examples are varied – Russians as trolls, women as bitches, poor people as scum, children as wild animals – as he shows how normalising positive and negative metaphors can have extraordinary results, from the extermination of six million people to the election of a president.
However much you might think you’re rather too sophisticated to be bewitched by linguistic spin, you’re likely to find you unwittingly fall into numerous traps…
