Broadcast: Tuesday 9th June 2009.
The guests were Roger Orwell, Milly Getachew, and Ken Livingstone.
Guests Roger Orwell, Milly Getachew, and Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, look at how euphemism, particularly political euphemism, can be either a tool for manipulating and disfranchising the citizenry or, as one of our guests will argue, providing a way to mitigate inevitable social conflict.
Originally recorded at the ICA as part of its ‘Talk’ programme.
The show was hosted by Seph Rodney.
Guest biographies:
Milly Getachew Zimeta is a philosopher and writer. She read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Somerville College Oxford, and completed an MPhil in Philosophy at King’s College Cambridge, and a PhD in Philosophy at University of York where she also served as President of the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association. Milly’s PhD was on intellectual paradigm shifts and radical social transformation. She is now a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton, and a Fellow of the NESTA Crucible programme for innovation in the sciences.
Roger Orwell was born near Southampton and grew up in the west of England. He has lived and worked in Sweden and central Spain and now lives in east London. He has wide-ranging interests in language theory, poetics, literature and fine art, and is currently exploring notional and functional accounts of context and relevance. He has a first class honours degree in Linguistics and English Critical Theory from the University of Westminster, London, plus qualifications in teaching from Trinity College London and English Phonetics from The IPA at University College London. Creativity has always been there as a counterpoint to the theory, first in music, then words, and now mostly daydreams. While killing time in the 1990s he worked in the UK music industry. He presently teaches English language at The University of the Arts London.