Book review: Political English: Language and the Decay of Politics by Thomas Docherty

In Political English: Language and the Decay of Politics, Thomas Docherty offers a new examination of the historical and contemporary linkages between power, politics and the English language, arguing that the impoverishment of language is intimately connected with the impoverishment of political debate today. The book demonstrates the concomitant decline of discourse and democracy and brings a new slant to analyses of racism,classism and xenophobia in its attention to the inequalities of power bound up in the English language, writes Sarah Burton.