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US election word of the week: swing state
Posted by Liz Potter on September 27, 2016
In this series we are looking at some of the language and terminology associated with the US electoral process in the run-up to the Presidential election in late 2016. This week’s word is swing state.A swing state, also known as a battleground state or a purple state, is a state in which no candidate or party has a clear majority or advantage, meaning that in theory either or any of them can win it.
Swing states, like swing voters, are so named because they change (or swing) from voting for one party or candidate to voting for another. The result of this is that they attract a disproportionate amount of attention and campaigning time during elections as the parties focus on the areas that could swing the result their way.
The term battleground state leans on the idea of politics as a conflict, while purple state derives from the fact that strongly Republican states are known as red states and strongly Democratic ones as blue states: if you mix red and blue you get purple, so a purple state is one that could go either way.
The main swing states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin; some of these are much more populous than others and therefore have far more electoral votes. Six weeks from election day, the polls in some swing states are too close to call. This is turning out to be a nail-biting contest.
Look out for the next post in this series. You can find past posts on the language of American politics here and here, or search for other posts in this series using the tag US politics.
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Language and words in the news – 23rd September, 2016
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Translating Shakespeare
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This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Language and words in the news – 2nd September, 2016
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Posted by ramesh krishnamurthy to Netting, texting, impacting and sheeting through the centuries - more about verbing and nouning on August 17, 2016 i find it easier... and suspect that many language learners may also find it easier... to think like Hoey, and think of words acquiring grammatical functions in context... (rather than of words having a priori membership of any word class)... only corpus concordances can tell us which wordforms are more frequently used in which contexts/phraseologies, and therefore which functions they most frequently acquire... ?
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Posted by Macmillan Dictionary to Japanese English on August 09, 2016 Hi Mariya. We had a whole month dedicated to Russian English back in 2010. You can find the posts and related material here: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/regional-english/russian-english Korean English is one we haven't got round to yet, and the same goes for SIngaporean and Hong Kong English, though we do add words from all these varieties when we can. Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Posted by mariya to Japanese English on August 09, 2016 Korean English, please. Hong Kong and Singapore too, plus Russian English. Thank you in advance
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Posted by Ben Harrow to Language and words in the news – 5th August, 2016 on August 09, 2016 Germanglish has a surprisingly nice ring to it. 'Now Butter by the Fishes', on the other hand, does not. Another lovely post Liz Thanks
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Posted by Ursula Riches to Pass the serviettes: dictionaries and class on July 29, 2016 Serviette was an Americanism, so i thought. Napkin makes me think of a cloth and serviette makes me think of paper. Napkin is a really cute word and it is very nice to have a cloth instead of a crummy bit of paper. It does feel nice to eat with proper cloth napkins and it feels very civilised. Today many people use kitchen towel. some of them are thicker and better than paper napkins.
