Politician, poet, and writer Michael D Higgins talks about the use of language in politics.
Michael D Higgins outlines the power of language and the responsibility of communicating your ideas in an effective manner.
You yourself are a complex thinker and yet you have this marvellous gift of using language in a very simple way.
He describes how people have the ability to speak very clearly at times of both sorrow and joy. He also comments on the use of language in politics and how politician's words have often been "renovated" and polished by press officers. He gives Fine Gael TD Paddy Sheehan as an example of someone who uses more traditional and natural language to get his message across.
If the Taoiseach visited my constituency, in a full day all he would see are bullocks, briars and bachelors.
Why anybody would want to change Paddy Sheehan’s description of life in his constituency Michael D Higgins wonders. He believes that people who go into politics and are involved in the discourse of ideas, need to have the confidence to take complex concepts and communicate them truthfully to the public.
This episode of 'Bibi’ was broadcast on 24 April 1991. The presenter is Bibi Baskin.
