Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality - Softcover
Synopsis
What do the phrases pro-life,” intelligent design,” and the war on terror” have in common? Each of them is a name for something that smuggles in a highly charged political opinion. Words and phrases that function in this special way go by many names. Some writers call them evaluative-descriptive terms.” Others talk of terministic screens” or discuss the way debates are framed.” Author Steven Poole calls them Unspeak. Unspeak represents an attempt by politicians, interest groups, and business corporations to say something without saying it, without getting into an argument and so having to justify itself. At the same time, it tries to unspeak in the sense of erasing or silencing any possible opposing point of view by laying a claim right at the start to only one way of looking at a problem. Recalling the vocabulary of George Orwell’s 1984, as an Unspeak phrase becomes a widely used term of public debate, it saturates the mind with one viewpoint while simultaneously makes an opposing view ever more difficult to enunciate. In this fascinating book, Poole traces modern Unspeak and reveals how the evolution of language changes the way we think.
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Review
A study of [UNSPEAK] is not just ttimely and welcome but (you'll feel once you've read this book) urgent. ...we should all be grateful to Steven Poole for his public spiritedness in undertaking it. Will someone please give him a medal, or a government office, or a slot on the radio with daily updates? (Claire Harman, EVENING STANDARD)
Poole has a sharp eye for hidden meanings and sub-texts. His account of politician s' addiction to the word "community" is a tour de force. By emphasising that one should always "look to the language", and going about his task with such forensic brio, Po (Francis Wheen, THE LIBERAL)
Steven Poole is to rhetorial doublespeak what the small boy was to the naked emperor: a pin to prick the speech bubbles (SUNDAY HERALD)
Steven Poole is to rhetorical doublespeak what the small boy was to the naked emperor: a pin to prick the speech bubbles . . . UNSPEAK sets out the case against, and also offers forensic analysis of, some of the most notorious examples he has found... UNSP (SCOTSMAN)
Book Description
* The language of everyday deception stripped bare
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- PublisherGrove Press
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0802143059
- ISBN 13 9780802143051
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages288
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Unspeak : How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality
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