As early as September 1974 he wrote of "Vietgate", a proposed pardon of the Watergate criminals and Vietnam War draft dodgers. The adoption of -gate to suggest the existence of a scandal was promoted by William Safire, the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon administration speechwriter. self-reproducing and self-reinforcing process, driven on by competitive and combative struggles in the media and political fields and giving rise to more and more scandals which increasingly become the focus of mediated forms of public debate, marginalizing or displacing other issues and producing on occasion a climate of political crisis which can debilitate or even paralyse a government. Stanyer links the widespread use of -gate to what the sociologist John Thompson calls "scandal syndrome": Such usages have been criticized by commentators as clichéd and misleading James Stanyer comments that "revelations are given the 'gate' suffix to add a thin veil of credibility, following 'Watergate', but most bear no resemblance to the painstaking investigation of that particular piece of presidential corruption". As a CBC News column noted in 2001, the term may "suggest unethical behaviour and a cover-up". The suffix has become productive as a libfix and is used to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal, particularly in politics and government. the complex itself was named after the "Water Gate" area where symphony orchestra concerts were staged on the Potomac River between 19. The scandal was named after the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The suffix -gate derives from the Watergate scandal of the United States in the early 1970s, which resulted in the resignation of U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |