The past few weeks I have been thinking about political language and reading or listening to a number of great speeches, both from the mid-to-late twentieth century and from the last few years. Whether you are learning or teaching English, I think these speeches can be useful as well as inspiring.

A lot of political discourse is not so inspiring, but it is important to understand in order to follow election news. So in this newsletter, I want to talk about both.

Political Language is a long page on EnglishHints explaining words important for political discussions: words like support, oppose, debate, contradict, distort, cooperate, and compromise. It also includes some political idioms, as well as links to two useful pages on Voice of America explaining many more idioms often used in debates or political discussions.

It has a very funny under-three-minute British video on easy ways to manipulate opinion polls, as well as a discussion of some frequent issues in American politics, and the American usage of “conservative” and “liberal.”