Phrasing matters too: In 1989, a poll found that far more respondents seemed to support interracial marriage when they were asked whether the government should "allow" the marriage (32%) vs. "forbid" such marriage (19%), even though, legally speaking, it's the exact same.
The recital unfolded like a vast epic: intensely coloured, fiercely dramatic, generously expressive; every phrase mattered.
Since politics does not work like that, however, and since immigration is a toxic issue, the phrase matters.
As the composer David Lang wrote in the program notes: "In Piano and String Quartet you can hear Webern in the distance — in the way each gesture, each note, each phrase matters.
As he phrased matters, expressing the feelings of every writer who has had to submit his prose to the sub-literate invigilations of state hirelings: "The defenders of the press in this assembly have on the whole no real relation to what they are defending.
In other words, to phrase matters more technically, the laws of physics are the same in every inertial frame of reference, that is, in all frames related by a Galilean transformation.
Phrasing clearly matters.MPs report that constituents who support gay marriage are not demonstrative about it, whereas opponents campaign assiduously.
"To use his own phrase, no matter where we look in the universe there is 'nothing not giving messages'.
His phrase "no matter how high they jump, they cannot power-dunk their way to the top of the world" should be required reading in the White House.
"I know he didn't mean to give me the jitters, but when you're lacking in mental strength as I was, one phrase, no matter how innocently meant, can lodge itself in your head," Thorne explains.
