{"id":1824,"date":"2017-02-06T00:08:03","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T22:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/?p=1824\/"},"modified":"2017-02-06T11:01:20","modified_gmt":"2017-02-06T09:01:20","slug":"the-word-of-the-week-is-civics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/the-word-of-the-week-is-civics\/","title":{"rendered":"The word of the week is <i>Civics<\/i>."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished reading\u00a0<em>Kansalaistaito<\/em>\u00a0(Civics) by Vesa Heikkinen and Tapio Pajunen; it was among last year&#8217;s candidates for the Tieto-Finlandia Award for non-fiction.\u00a0In one section, the authors use parts of speech to analyze political language.\u00a0One of\u00a0the most popular nouns in politics is\u00a0<em>people<\/em>.\u00a0<em>People\u00a0<\/em>is useful in many situations: it can integrate by<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>referring to the public as a whole<strong>,<\/strong>\u00a0or differentiate<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>by separating ordinary people from an imagined elite, or our countrymen from other nationalities. Politicians<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>also love verbs like\u00a0<em>reform<\/em>\u00a0and impersonal<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>uses of\u00a0<em>to be.\u00a0<\/em>Usage like &#8220;it is&#8221; or &#8220;things are&#8221;<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>doesn&#8217;t lead anywhere, but does help the speaker describe and classify issues. To say that something existing will be\u00a0<em>reformed<\/em>\u00a0is to convey a positive message while avoiding details. The number one adjective in politics is\u00a0<em>good<\/em>.\u00a0The &#8220;good&#8221;\u00a0state of affairs is\u00a0presented<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>as fact, but mostly it&#8217;s\u00a0simply opinions.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>As for pronouns, the most popular ones for politicians are\u00a0<em>we, us, our<\/em>. They&#8217;re an inviting, efficient start on the path to persuasion. We-speak creates a team spirit, although it&#8217;s sometimes unclear who is and is not included in\u00a0<em>us<\/em>. An important skill for citizens is understanding that words do not have a single, unchanging meaning; their meaning shifts according to the speaker\u2019s purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished reading\u00a0Kansalaistaito\u00a0(Civics) by Vesa Heikkinen and Tapio Pajunen; it was among last year&#8217;s candidates for the Tieto-Finlandia Award for non-fiction.\u00a0In one section, the authors use parts of speech to analyze political language.\u00a0One of\u00a0the most popular nouns in politics is\u00a0people.\u00a0People\u00a0is useful in many situations: it can integrate by\u00a0referring to the public as a whole,\u00a0or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-wordoftheweek-en","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}