Main content

Weighing Your Words

Chris Ledgard investigates three situations where using the right words is crucial: delivering a cancer diagnosis, reporting under an embargo and during peace negotiations.

Chris Ledgard investigates three situations where the precise use of words is crucial. He speaks to a cancer specialist and a woman in remission from the disease about the language of diagnosis and prognosis. How do doctors balance the need to be sensitive with the need to be accurate? Is the word cancer itself still one that people prefer not to use? The second situation under consideration is when journalists, covering a fast moving story for the popular press, are made party to information they are requested not to print. Reporter Paul Sims describes how he dealt with one such situation during the hunt for the gunman, Raoul Moat in 2010. Finally, there can be few situations where choosing precisely the right words matters more than during negotiations to end an armed conflict.
Britain's Chief Negotiator on Northern Ireland, Jonathan Powell and Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy, discuss the language that paved the way to the Good Friday Agreement and why it was often ambiguous rather than clear language that kept the talks on track.

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Mon 21 Jul 2014 23:00

Broadcasts

  • Tue 15 Jul 2014 16:00
  • Mon 21 Jul 2014 23:00

From blunk to brickfielder: our wonderful words for weather

From blunk to brickfielder: our wonderful words for weather

Exploring creative descriptions for wind, rainfall and sunny spells from around the world

Digital body language 鈥 how to communicate better online

Digital body language 鈥 how to communicate better online

We need to find new ways of talking to each other 鈥渧irtually鈥.

Coinages that changed the world 鈥 and some that tried to...

Coinages that changed the world 鈥 and some that tried to...

Exploring the hidden histories of obscure words, and common buzz phrases.

Ittibitium, borborygmus, and Ba humbugi 鈥 14 wonderful science words you鈥檝e never heard of

Ittibitium, borborygmus, and Ba humbugi 鈥 14 wonderful science words you鈥檝e never heard of

Michael Rosen puts the language of science under the microscope.

Download this programme

Subscribe to this programme or download individual episodes.

Keywords for Our Time

Series of programmes examining key phrases in public debate.

Smiley face: Seven things you didn't know about emoji

Some facts about emoji - possibly the world's first truly global form of communication.

The funny words that kids invent

Have a look at some of the fantastic words that children invent and reimagine.

Podcast