[ExI] transparency again

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Oct 22, 2016, at 2:12 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> spike  Yes, to all of that. I am particularly interested in how the meaning of the word 'agenda' got changed to something suspicious.  Of course politicians did that for us by hinting about their opponents' evil plans.  bill w
> 
The word 'agenda' often carries a suspicious tinge to it -- and that happened long before this election season. For instance, if you accuse someone of having an agenda in some contexts, it's usually taken to mean that they're not interested in an open discussion -- just in getting their agenda pushed. Of course, usually this means, as Spike uses, a 'hidden agenda.' 

Anyhow, many terms have this kind of context switching meaning. If you call something a 'scheme,' for example, that can sometimes be neutral, but in the phrase 'money-making scheme' it's not.

And I don't think there was an innocent time when language was free of these ambiguities. Instead, there are just different sets of ambiguities, in my reckoning.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
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