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Articles

Bewitched

Following on from our Wittgenstein special last issue, Brandon Absher shows how Wittgenstein’s style of therapeutic philosophy can help us be more attentive in our use of language in everyday contexts.

One day – I suppose sometime in 2001 or 2002 – we Americans [and others] learned to use a new phrase. Somehow, overnight, the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ crept, insidiously, into our everyday vocabulary. I recall I sent a letter to my Senator asking that he vote against giving the President the authority to go to war in Iraq. His reply was littered with the phrase and its now more common abbreviation ‘WMD’. I was struck immediately by the novelty of the phrase and by what was packed into it.

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