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Language Log: Despicable human scum

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For those wondering why on earth an official announcement about the solemn business of executing a traitor would use wildly overheated language like "despicable human scum" and "worse than a dog" (especially about the uncle of the reigning monarch), the BBC has published a short article on the language of North Korean posthumous character assassination. One expert commentator quoted by the BBC suggests it is "a particular dialect of bureaucratese", but another possible analysis would be that the members of the DPRK's ghastly nuclear-armed luxury-guzzling prison-camp-addicted psycho ruling clique are stark staring raving mad (and even require announcers on the state-controlled TV news to sound insane). Naturally, there will be no comment here on the merits of these rival hypotheses. This is Language Log, not Murderous Monarchy Log.

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