Rhetoric of the Right

<p>This study seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which changes in the language associated with economic issues are reflective of a gradual but quantifiable conservative ideological shift.</p><p>In this rigorous analysis David George uses as his data a century of word usage within <em>The New York Times</em> starting in 1900. It is not always obvious how the changes identified necessarily reflect a stronger prejudice toward laissez-faire free market capitalism and so much of the book seeks to demonstrate the subtle ways in which the changing language indeed carries with it a political message. This analysis is made through exploration of five major areas of focus: economics rhetoric scholarship and the growing behavioral economics school of thought; the discourse of government and taxation; the changing meaning of competition and competitive; changing attitudes toward labor; and the celebration of growth relative to the decline in attention to economic justice and social equality.</p>