Reviews for Language Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse

The average rating for Language Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-06-29 00:00:00 Susan Steckler Out of the 13 studies collected in this volume I have read only 7, because the others weren't relevant to my field of study. But out of these 7, only one was interesting. The others just kept repeating the blatantly obvious, to the point that I was amazed that the authors even felt the need to write it. The article about persuasion did not teach me anything new, neither did the manipulation in newspapers, etc. You don't even have to have any knowledge in the field and you'll already know the point of the studies by simply reading their title. Parts of some studies were just summaries of works by others, in one case the majority of the study was about work by Grice and others, contributing nothing new. The book was also plagued by typos and errors or random words appearing out of nowhere, probably as a result of shitty editing. The language was weird, the book being written mainly by Germans in English. Many studies supplied examples from German but either outright translated them or provided translations in the annex, except for one important definition (linguisticaly oriented definition of stereotypes) that was for some reason left in German with no translation whatsoever, which seems very odd in an otherwise completely English book. I had to hit up a German major friend to help me with that. The only thing worthwhile was Teun van Dijk's study - although it doesn't bring anything new if you have read his book Discourse and Power before. I don't usually rate non-fiction or textbooks but this one has left such a foul taste that I have to rate it...

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-13 00:00:00 John Johnson Overall, it was good. It's strongest point was it's writing. It had very beautiful passages that really felt alive at some points. But it was let down, by how sometimes it felt as if the author was just chewing up and spitting the plot down your mouth. It shows that Corneille was struggling with the rules of the age, and that if not constrained it would've turned out much better. Trying to keep the three unities, the plot felt a little nonsensical and rushed. Out of the characters Chimène was relatable though at times annoying and Rodrigo was a Mary Sue. The strongest character for me was the Infanta, for some reason she was the most poignantly written. Everyone else was unimportant and forgettable.