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Featured Faculty Publication
Big tobacco focuses on the facts to hide the truth: an algorithmic exploration of courtroom tropes and taboos
The language used by attorneys in tobacco litigation reveals key elements of the strategies deployed by cigarette makers and their courtroom opponents. According to industry lawyers, for example, smokers ‘passed away’ but were never ‘killed’; they always had the ‘ability to quit’ but were not ‘addicted’. Jurors, tobacco attorneys claim, should focus on the individual ‘facts’ of the case but not on the larger ‘truth’ about the industry. Language is, per Bolinger, ‘a loaded weapon,’ which means that words are not innocent conveyers of meaning. There is a subtle micropolitics in human speech, expressed in the kinds of words chosen by one side or another to deploy or to avoid. Robert Proctor explores...
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Oct 14 2019 | Stanford News
The STS curriculum offers an incredible variety of courses that has provided me with a broad education while also allowing me to specialize in subject areas of my choice. Every class I take informs what I have learned in previous classes from a whole new perspective. To me, that is the crux of a great undergraduate education.
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