Writing and the Moral Self

Originally published in 1991, this book analyses the relation between writing and ethics in a number of social contexts - in politics, as language discloses its connections to the institutions of totalitarianism and democracy; in the university, as contemporary scholarly ideals find an uncomfortably accurate representation in the stylistic forms of academic writing; in daily social practice, ranging from the status of truth in journalistic writing to the connection between pronouns and affirmative action; and finally in the ethical structure of language itself.

Berel Lang

Part 1: The Ethics of Language 1. Strunk, White, and Grammar as Morality 2. Pre-Literacy, Post-Literacy, and the Cunning of History 3. The Rights of Black English 4. Anti-Anti-Obscenity 5. Politics and the New History of Truth 6. Pronouns and Affirmative Action Part 2: Rewriting in the Academy 7. Academics and the English Language 8. The New Scholasticism 9. The Humanities in American Life 10. Tolerance and Its Discontents: Teaching the Holocaust 11. About the Dead, Speak _Only _Mainly _Some _No Good 12. Normal Academic Progress Part 3: Politics at More Than Its Word 13. Politics and the Death of Language: Orwell's Newspeak 14. Virtue as a Literary Form: Orwell's Art 15. Human Nature and Political Artifact 16. The Body Impolitic: Thinking Thoreau 17. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Evil 18. Language and Genocide