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Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show

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A scholarly expose of the linguistic nuances of political doublespeak could prove deadly boring. But in TALKING RIGHT, Geoffrey Nunberg proves himself an able and funny commentator and educator on the topic. He traces and annotates the evolution of political and media euphemisms, lingo, and nomenclature in the U.S. with a gimlet-eyed stare. Yet even with the brio that Nunberg brings to his theses, one wonders: Is the failure of liberals (or "progressives," if you prefer) really an inability to get a good motto on a bumper sticker? Or is it simply that since Clinton, there has not been a compelling leader to take charge of the Democratic Party?

Anyway, regardless of your party affiliation, if you're politically aware and/or enjoy thinking about the meaning of words and/or have an interest in American history and current events, you will get something from this book. (Did I leave anyone out?)

SIDELIGHT: With a book that deals with linguistics and meaning, one hopes that the author is an expert in his field. Impressive academic credentials aside, Geoffrey Nunberg chairs the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. That's good enough for me. (Imagine the rousing discussions they have in that group!)

The author's title, which describes how most Republicans describe most Democrats may not BE correct, but it SOUNDS correct to most people. That is the point this book is trying to make. Nunberg, a linguist by trade, shows how Republicans use terse and memorable mottos and slogans to get their points across and label their opponents - and it works, and has been working since 1980.

In contrast, the author points out that Democratic candidates have largely used lengthy discussions to argue their positions so that, at the end of the day, the voter can't remember the point the candidate was trying to make in the first place. This is largely because liberals have great disdain for simplistic answers to complex problems, but forget that the average voter can't remember the complex solution when he/she steps into the voting booth, even if the complex solution is correct.

The author points out that even when the Democrats have tried to come up with slogans they often fall flat. He uses John Kerry's 2004 campaign slogan "America can do better" as an example. Nunberg points out that this slogan sounds like what you would say to a less than brilliant child whose grades were even worse than expected. Is this really the Democrats' message to the nation: that they don't need to be quite as pathetic as they now are? The author points out that over the last 26 years, Bill Clinton seems to be the only national candidate who has been able to use the power of language effectively to get his message across with "It's the economy" in 1992 and "the bridge to the 21st century" in 1996.

The author points out that the right has rewritten the language of politics to the point that even progressives and liberals can't help using language that embodies the worldview of the right even when trying to put forth the worldview of the left. Thus, the author argues, the challenge facing liberals and Democrats is to recapture ordinary language itself.

I found this book to be an interesting perspective on modern politics and the success of the right from a linguistic standpoint, and I highly recommend it no matter what your political persuasion might be.

Geoffrey Nunberg's "Talking Right" is one of a number of books that have come out recently explaining why Democrats (and liberals, though not necessarily synonymous) have trouble getting their collective message across. Nunberg's approach is through language itself as he relates the success that the Republican right wing has had in wresting control of that message through slick phrases and twists on existing parlance. The author's book is straightforward and informative, to say the least.

It's clear from the beginning of "Talking Right" that this is not a book that will scream either at the right wingers or at us, the readers. Slowly, but with a broad brush, Nunberg hits the right (and with it the left, as well) with chapters on class, the "L" word, government and values. He's terrific, for instance, in delving into the word "freedom" and how the earliest Americans didn't use that word much...they preferred "liberty". It may be a bit of a shock to learn that the Declaration of Independence doesn't mention freedom at all but we are reminded "...it was liberty that Patrick Henry declared himself willing to die for....". In this wonderful chapter, Nunberg goes on to explain how freedom then became connected with other words along the way and how it became central to the Republican party's campaign for word domination.

While much of "Talking Right" is low-key, Nunberg revs up in a chapter called "Old Bottles, New Whines" and almost roars to the finish. The narrative here becomes eye-popping and this last third of the book is the best. Near the end of "Talking Right" Nunberg, speaking about "the right's capture of the basic vocabulary of politics...", concludes "...if the right can do this with an ersatz populism, surely the Democrats can do the same thing with a genuine one". It's a fitting statement to include in the final chapter of this terrific book.

Geoffrey Nunberg has chosen to restrict the scope of this book to a detailed description of the ways in which Republican spinmeisters have manipulated public opinion by the deceptive use of language. Within those narrow boundaries, the book is both thorough and comprehensive. For that reason it provides a useful refresher course on what perceptive observers of political discourse already know. But I was disappointed by the fact that the book was long on documentation and short on theory and analysis. The author is, after all, a professor of linguistics at a major university. Perhaps he was concerned that greater depth would make the book inaccessible to the audience that he desired to reach. But who in this country is likely to read his book? Scarcely a third of Americans read any books at all, and not more than ten percent read anything other than gothic romances and other genre fiction. Surely he could not expect to attract the attention of more than one-tenth of one percent of the adult population, and that composed of the very readers who are likely to seek something more substantial than what he has presented here.

What this book lacks most is historical and cultural context. Professor Nunberg does make brief mention of Edmund Burke, George Orwell, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty. But he ignores most of the long history of concern about linguistic deception, from Plato's polemics against the Sophists, through Marx's theory of the cultural superstructure being being determined by the economic base and Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations into language games, to the postmodern assault on the concept of "truth" in the works of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and others. On a more mundane level, deception has been tolerated and even encouraged in America throughout the country's existence. During the nineteenth century, courses on rhetoric were part of the core curriculum of primary and secondary schools as well as colleges. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the use of propaganda has been accepted practice in both business and politics. Who can claim in good faith that words like "selling," "advertising," "public relations," "advocacy," and "spin" are anything other than euphemisms for lying? There are important ethical issues involved in the deceptive use of language that need to be addressed. What is the appropriate response of an honest Democrat to the manipulative practices of Republicans? Is it ethical to engage in the same kind of deception as your opponents just because they started it first? Does it profit a Democrat to gain the world if he/she loses his/her soul? I would prefer that the author had discussed questions like these in depth in this book.

Professor Nunberg attempts to distinguish the remedy he suggests Democrats use against Republican deception from that of George Lakoff, his colleague at Berkeley, by rejecting the term "reframing" and calling for the creation of alternative "narratives" using "colloquial" language. To me, that difference appears to be one of semantics rather than substance. The real difference between the two men seems to be that Lakoff is more aggressive and more committed to the fight. Nunberg seems to be saying that the use of deceptive language doeasn't really make that much difference, at most a two to three percent change in opinion. He seems to be comforted by a naive confidence that in the long run truth will out. He thinks that Democrats should focus more on changing their policies than on changing their language. But his conclusions are contradicted by the facts that he lays out in such great detail throughout the book. I hope that Professor Nunberg will write another book on this important subject, one that offers to a more realistic target audience a five-course meal rather than an appetizer.

It's no secret that people who are trying to sell you something will be very careful and sometimes dishonest when it comes to the actual words and phrases they use to describe their product. In TALKING RIGHT, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg examines the use of language manipulation as it has been used in modern American politics and the effect it has had back on the language itself.

Since the birth of advertising, sellers would spend many hours writing and rewriting slogans, bumper-stickers and sales pitches to make sure that each word had the desired impact on the listener. But Nunberg's research is more interested not just in how language is utilized by the political salespeople, but how certain words and phrases in the vernacular have ended up being subtly changed by constant repetition and reenforcement from politicians, pundits and spin-meisters.

While the word "liberal" is obviously where the book hangs its hat, other words and phrases have also migrated to take on different meanings and connotations. For example in a political context, when someone refers to "values", they actually are only discussing a small subset of possible moral issues, regardless of their position on other subjects. Even a word as old as "Christian" is taking on a more restrictive definition.

TALKING RIGHT is written in an easy-to-read style. It's breezy and almost conversational without feeling shallow. I found to it be a little repetitive at times (odd, considering the relatively small word-count), but I forgive it because of all the little facts that I hadn't know. I had, for example, recently noticed Republicans referring to their opponents as "the Democrat Party". But I hadn't realized that the deliberate shortening of "Democratic" has been a tactic going back over 70 years. The book is told mainly from a liberal point of view. This is because of Nunberg's thesis (and I think that most would agree) that the right-wing has been far more successful at branding words and phrases as belonging to their side of the national discussion.

Nunberg picked up on a lot of things that seemed familiar to me. Things that I had noticed but hadn't realized that I noticed. It's a very illuminating book in that way; it crystallizes a lot of things I had only half-realized while listening to left-wing and right-wing talking heads exchanging insults on cable news.

Talking Right is a book about how the liberals have lost the language wars...not the culture wars.

I have always thought that the real problem with Democrats and liberals is their effort to politicize a little too high up the brain stem...

Republicans always keep it simple. They exploit emotions that are low on the brain stem...fear, hate, greed, love, lust, family... These are all ideas that can easily be observed at the Ape House of your local zoo...or at Republican Conventions!

Democrats on the other hand talk about equality, tolerance, justice, fairness....alas, this stuff is way way up in the cortical gray matter...alas, in a location that is hard to get at, and harder to explain to someone who is only using 5% of the brain capacity.

Result: Republicans win.

Now, at some point the ignorant should "wise up" when they see their jobs and pensions and kids going off shore to satify the greed and warmongering of the elites...

But that hasn't happen yet...

Maybe it will...some day... But in the meantime I would suggest that Democrats go to the zoo and watch the monkeys and apes for the rest of the summer...READ TALKING RIGHT, and then frame their message for the November election.

I had heard Nunberg's interview with Teri Gross on NPR and decided that was one of my "sit on the beach and read" vacation books last week.

The other reviews say it but here goes. Democrats have a terrible time getting ONE message across because they are diverse and want in include everyone. Nunberg shows how trying to be inclusive and compassionate with your rhetoric only makes you wishy-washy. Republicans can be given big credit: THEY HAVE ONE MESSAGE BECAUSE THEY REALLY DO NOT CARE WHO THEY OFFEND. In this day and age it wins an election, sadly enough. Nunberg's comments on Bill Clinton are especially fascinating, Clinton came up even more rungs on the ladder for me after reading this. Clinton understands the rhetoric of politics and how to unify people, Franklin Roosevalt did too (as Nunberg points out).

The author, a linguist, paints a very bleak picture about political discourse in the United States. As he makes perfectly clear, forces on the political right have captured and distorted the meaning of basic terms like, "liberal, elite, values, freedom, entrepreneur, ownership, class, bias, and color-blind." In fact, the usage of such terms, as defined by the right, has become so pervasive and accepted that liberals unwittingly use the words in the same manner. Liberal outlets refer to "liberal elites" or "media elites" as does Fox News.

The main goal of the right has been to take economic and class differences out of the political debate. The efforts of New Deal liberals to right the country after capitalistic excess in the 1930s have all been buried under an avalanche of words that distort their efforts. In this conservative era, liberalism has been shorn of its economic function and liberals - academics, journalists, coastal urbanites, etc - have been branded as cultural elitists with expensive tastes, indifferent to ordinary Americans. Economic elites, who are generally Republicans, have disappeared from political discourse. Ironically, Republican elitists have lifestyles that do not differ from affluent liberals. Even Bill Gates, in all of his goofiness, is passed off as a member of the middle-class. Pointing out economic inequities is viewed as "class warfare." Those that have been downsized - or some would say victims of actual class warfare - and now operate marginal businesses are glowingly lumped into the ranks of "entrepreneurs." The privatizing of Social Security with its attendant risks for the common man but guaranteed fees for brokers is cynically labeled as part of the trend of an "ownership" society. "Freedom" has morphed into "freedom of choice," or the right to unlimited shopping, with the hidden understanding that market forces are benign and unassailable. There is no freedom from economic insecurity in this revamping. Basically, the party of the business class has successfully persuaded millions that economic forces are benevolent and that it is only elitist liberals that want to interfere with markets and increase taxes for their dubious social programs.

The author discounts recent suggestions by those who want to right the liberal ship to adopt "framing" or slogans that will counter the words of the right. It's hard to out manipulate the master manipulators. The author relies more upon the fact the right has misrepresented political and economic realities. Hopefully, at some point, with the help of the liberal opposition, those distortions will become more evident. But that is a very long shot indeed. Occasionally a statement such as Clinton's in 1992 will reverberate: "Those who work hard and play by the rules get the shaft." The author ignores the fact that without Perot sucking up some of the right-wing vote, that statement would not have propelled Clinton into the Presidency. So much for catchy phrasing.

The book is hardly ground-breaking. Most of this analysis has been evident for the politically astute for several years. Furthermore, the book is a bit choppy and repetitious as is always the case when a series of articles are bundled into a book. The book is also disturbing. It is the business elites that have the resources to fund the think-tanks and own the media that perpetuate this linguistic subterfuge to capture the votes of susceptible fundamentalists. One force that is absolutely essential to counter all of this - a free press - has been so cowed under a relentless barrage of charges of liberal bias, that they passively accept these changed meanings. Of course, the fact that the media supports the business agenda is also a factor. This cynical tampering with basic political and social terminology could well lead us all to some dark places where we really do not want to be.

"Talking Right" tells the story of a right-wing linguistic campaign that has altered the meaning of everyday political vocabulary. "Values" has strayed far from its dictionary meaning to become the exclusive property of the right; "liberals" has become a designation for people whose taste in cars, cheese, and coffee puts them "out of touch" with "real Americans;" "ownership society" a pretext for apportioning wealth to the haves and have-mores; we associate "bias" only with the "liberal media" rather than the pundits and talk-show hosts of the right.

Poll after poll show a majority of middle-class voters believe Democrats would do a better job on issues affecting their daily lives - Social Security, taxes, environment, education. But a significant number seem to ignore their own best interests and make their choices on the basis of patriotic appeals and cultural issues. The point of language in politics today is becoming to convince others of your sincerity and concern.

Republican media and institutions are much better at staying on message than Democrats.

The "L" word is challenged by white backlash to civil rights, perceived failure of Great Society programs - now it stands for profligacy, anarchy, elitism, idealism, softness, and irresponsibility. At the same time, Democrats have proven unable to handle the "class warfare" charge. Meanwhile, for Republicans, "entrepreneur" has replaced "capitalist" (had bad connotations) and it has been stretched to include many self-employed without benefits because they can't do any better.

Another part of Democrats' problem is that the average citizen doesn't understand economics very well. Still another is the right-wing chant of "liberal bias" - plays well because it is a well-documented fact that most reporters are Democrats; Republicans have also taken advantage of the war on terror, patriotism.

"Talking Right" helps one see the language problems facing Democrats; recapturing the language of politics will require (per Nunberg) taking advantage of the fact that Democrats have truth on their side, and sardonic humor (such as that of Jon Stewart and Al Franken).

Nunberg's thesis is that the Left has lost the war of words with the Right who are more savvy in connecting at a gut level with the country's fears and desires. The Left is "tone deaf" with its slogans while the Right's bromides resonate with middle America. "The Death Tax," for example, embodies all that is wrong with "big government": its intrusiveness is so extensive that its tentacles reach into our lives even unto death. That's the message at least. Numberg pries underneath the cheap slogans and sanctimonious cant of political discourse to show that most political dialogue is style over substance. Additionally, he shows that the liberal stereotype is just that, a grotesque caricature and that the divide between liberals and conservatives in terms of lifestyles is exaggerated. His most important point is that written language does not gain power until it becomes part of culture's informal speech. Only then does language gain full currency and influence ideas. The Right has exploited this truth and the Left has remained impotent.