Customer Reviews

Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality

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This is one of those books I've been waiting for: a calm but clever look at politicians' language. Poole doesn't take what politicians say at face value and then whine about it, and nor does he simply dismiss as lies everything politicians say. Instead, Poole listens carefully to political language to show how meanings are smuggled into certain terms and phrases and, in particular, how these terms or phrases insinuate that people holding an opposing position are wrong (think "Friends of the Earth": you don't support them? Well, then you must be an "Enemy of the Earth"!) The book is full of examples from both sides of the Atlantic, including charged terms like "ethnic cleansing", "terrorist suspect" and "climate change". Even with such important and difficult subject matter, Poole is entertaining as well as convincing. And it doesn't matter what your political bent is because, as Poole shows, no political party has a monopoly on Unspeak. Every journalist and blogger who does not want to be a simple relay between politician and public, or an uncritical purveyor of careful political manipulation, should become familiar with this book. And if you read this book, you will pay attention to news and the blogs in a whole new way.

I'd recommend Unspeak as: (a) The highest form of escapism - a vital polemic so engagingly and elegantly written that it wipes out everything else you might have been thinking or worrying about when you opened it. Since it has something important to say about most of the most critical wrangles of our time, it is virtuous escapism. (b) A gift to please or flatter any recipient who is or wants to be considered intelligent.

***
This is the rarest kind of book that reflects a monumental concentration of thought and creative energy - a striking contrast to most books today, which are written fighting the distractions of the author's other work, or as a "night job". I don't know how Poole pulled off this feat - or if Unspeak actually had the benefit of his undivided attention - but that's the way his book reads.

Reviewers who have only skimmed the text are making two serious mistakes in their descriptions of Unspeak. Contrary to what Nick Beard (customer review, below) says, the book is not remotely a magazine article on stilts. True, its big idea, though subtle, can be swiftly summarised as "a style of language that attempts to smuggle in an unspoken argument by insinuation." But the Socratic method can also be shrunk to a nugget, yet learning how Socratic dialogue works requires exposition, examples - and practice.

The worse mistake is casting the author as a prisoner of left-wing thinking. In fact, what Poole demonstrates - often with lacerating wit - is that the Left is just as adept at Unspeak's creepy manipulations, as in . . .

** . . . US and UK politicians' use of the word "community" in ways that, on close examination, add up to a "mental anaesthetic, novocaine for the soul." Clinton, says Poole, often "let the word stand alone, using it in a tremblingly phatic way that was emptied of all specific meaning." (Was there ever a better encapsulation of Clintonian rhetoric?)

**. . . or . . .an excoriation of a police report about the accidental murder by men in uniform of the Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes - taken for a terrorist without any evidence at all - on a London Underground train in 2005. The report is crammed chock-full with the mentality of Unspeak. Dissecting it, Poole tells us that "[a]ccording to the first theoretician of tragedy, Aristotle, the tragic hero must be doomed by his own tragic error, or hamartia." He continues: "And they were clearly only spectators, since there was no mention of their having killed Menezes, who instead somehow mislaid his health without outside help. Tony Blair subsequently corrected this unfortunate implication with the most passive, no-blame language possible, referring to `the death that has happened,' as though, perhaps, it had been the result of natural causes."

Along the way, as Poole tackles language used in discussing laws to control social behaviour, debates about immigration and asylum-seekers, environmental battles, military operations in the Middle East and the politics of counter-terrorism, he shows us how much fascinating subtext most of us miss as we race through news reports. For instance: "Contests of Unspeak," like the one in which the barrier Israel began building in 2002 was referred to by Israeli authorities as a "security fence," but as a tool of "apartheid" by the Palestinians shut out by the structure - which included electrified steel-and-barbed-wire and a concrete wall. Agence France Presse, Poole tells us, resolved the giant fuss about whether the thing should be referred to as a wall (the Arabs' choice) or fence by calling it, tongue firmly in cheek, the "concrete fence." Poole concludes: "The designation's eventual evolution into `'separation barrier' was something of an improvement, even if the phrase was a crude tautology." Indeed.

In this insightful book, journalist Steven Poole shows how our rulers abuse language to promote and disguise war, torture and corporate interests. Words have consequences: as he observes, a jury deciding whether a crime was murder or manslaughter is not conducting a linguistic exercise. Similarly, when `freedom is on the march' (Bush), governments can describe murderous and illegal invasions as benign `regime change' and `humanitarian intervention'.

Poole brilliantly contrasts reality and deceptions across many different areas. The phrase `faith communities' defines the people referred to as united monolithically and for ever by their beliefs. `Human nature' is code for misanthropic pessimism about human affairs, so war is said to symbolise `the depravity of human nature'.

On climate change, Greenpeace's chief scientist preferred the frightener `climate meltdown'. Corporations, religious and commercial, use advertising slogans like `Intelligent Design' (more accurately, Implicit Deism), `sound science', `natural' gas and `organic' produce.

Operations Merciful Angel (Kosovo), Just Cause (Panama) and Iraqi Freedom - such cute names! - `serviced' targets and `delivered' force packages: hardly killing people at all. NATO's weapons are always `smart' and `surgical'. NATO forces drop sweet little `bomblets' and playful `daisy cutters'. So the inevitable killings of civilians, women and children can only be `tragic mistakes', or not even the slaughter of civilians, women or children: as the US Army spokesman said, "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC." By contrast, the enemy's weapons are nothing less than Weapons of Mass Destruction, with big capital letters, so they are much more frightening than our puny bombers and aircraft carriers and tanks.

Bush and Blair's `war on terror' is asymmetric warfare: `we' are fighting a war; `you' are not, so you cannot be prisoners of war, only `enemy combatants' and `terrorist suspects', so `we' can imprison you without trial and torture you. Donald Rumsfeld described as just `abuses' what even the US Army Manual defines as torture - mock executions, sleep deprivation and `stress positions'.

The FBI had to admit that what it acknowledged were `torture techniques' had produced `no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date'. In English, the torture has been pointless, as well as immoral. Still, our guys sure have fun doing it, so let's not punish them, unless they're silly enough to admit it.

If all citizens had Steven Poole's mental clarity, intellectual rigour, and intolerance of con-artistry, we would all have better governments and live better lives. Politicians (and corporations) would not be allowed to get away with spouting thinly-disguised propaganda, and using language deliberately chosen to convey certain opinions and prevent the very expression of contrary opinions. Voters would immediately spot meretricious arguments, intentional fallacies, and answers that beg the question. In the real world, unfortunately, we have to manage with a population that has mastered the English language well enough for everyday purposes, but mostly remain helpless suckers for skilfully camouflaged rhetoric.

Poole jumps right in by examining the familiar phrases "pro-choice", "tax relief", and "Friends of the Earth". He points out that choice, relief, and friendship are all considered good things under almost all circumstances, so these phrases are calculated to receive almost automatic approval before any process of analytical thought even begins. Often, indeed, they may completely foreclose the possibility of rational analysis, triggering knee-jerk emotional reactions (favourable ones in these three cases). You might feel, on consideration, that abortion is not always justifiable; or that taxes should not be cut; or that the Friends of the Earth may have done things that you would not approve of. But the names "pro-choice", "tax relief", and "Friends of the Earth" are calculated to stop you short before you do any considering. This is what Poole means by "Unspeak" - language that smuggles in a particular point of view and prevents alternative thoughts from even getting a foothold. It's more subtle, and far more effective, than the crude "Newspeak" and "Doublethink" introduced by George Orwell in 1984.

Having made his pitch, Poole proceeds to analyse a number of common unspeak terms in considerable depth. Each gets a whole chapter to itself; they are Community, Nature, Tragedy, Operations, Terror, Abuse, Freedom, and Extremism. As you might expect, he gets a lot of mileage out of quoting people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, and countless spokespersons for the UK and US governments. Some of the examples are quite extreme, such as the reaction of a senior naval officer to the news that three prisoners at Guantanamo had managed to hang themselves: "I believe this was not an act of desperation, rather an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us". The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy called the suicides "a good PR move to draw attention". Once you have got over the almost incomprehensible callousness and cynicism of those utterances, you can clearly see the hidden agenda of implying that every single thing done by "enemy combatants" is aimed at harming or at least embarrassing the USA. The alternative view - that perhaps those men had done nothing wrong, had been captured and imprisoned by mistake, and killed themselves out of sheer despair - is ruled out before it can even enter the listener's mind.

Poole explicitly contrasts his idea of Unspeak with the view expressed by Orwell (and more recently Jamie Whyte, e.g. in "A Load of Old Blair") that politicians seek above all to say nothing meaningful. On the whole, his position has a lot of merit - the more so because Unspeak can sound a lot like gibberish to someone who sees through it, but does not adequately comprehend the agenda that it is designed to further. While its success cannot be taken for granted - and could be seriously undermined by really good mass education, for example - Unspeak holds out the promise of brainwashing entire populations, without their ever knowing what has been done to them.

Mr Poole is an angry man, he has serious issues with a lot of the abuse of language that is being perpetuated by politicians at the moment. You can almost feel the anger oozing from the edges of this book (I'd recommend something light and fluffy to read after this!). He looks at the propaganda wars being waged at the moment and asks why we aren't asking more questions about it. And he's right. We should be asking more questions, demaning straight answers and not voting the idiots back in when those answers aren't forthcoming.

The problem is that people in general are just too lazy, once it doesn't affect them they don't bother to ask the questions, force the issue, demand the answers. That's part of Mr Poole's anger, his inability to change people in general.

Do you notice that our evil wars and battles always seem to have noble sounding titles? It's not by accident. And author Steven Poole shows us how it's done.

How do you justify the killing of innocent women, children and babies? You call them: "collateral damage."

Certainly no reasonable person would oppose "Opperation Just Cause, "Operation Restore Hope" or "Operation Iraqi Liberation."

This book is everything that is wrong with political nonfiction. It COULD have been a good book had it stood up without bias and examined the way bureaucrats and politicians of all stripes come up with terms that do not even moderately describe the thing the term becomes a label for. And that appears to be where the author starts, examining the use of language to distort meaning, or to make meaning vague. For example: the use of 'reform' to describe a particular bill, leaving out completely how strong a reform or in what direction the reform will proceed. A reform could double the status quo program, eliminate it entirely, or reshape it without changing it meaningfully, yet all are uselessly categorized as 'reform'. Not a new example, but a classic.

But after a very short time, the author dives deep into self-indulgence. The book becomes a hit piece on any politician who speaks against a policy he likes. He collects quotes from said pol, and promptly runs them through a torture test of micro-analysis, using dictionary nit-picking, etymological trivia that the speaker was unlikely to have been aware of, and inferred (not implied) meaning to cast the statement in the most negative possible light.

The author bounces from topic to topic, giving his cherry-picked opposition statements these patently unfair linguistic torture tests in order to prop up a straw-man argument that he can then beat down, all the while implying that the politician used his deceptive language in a calculated manner because he knew his position was untenable. Indeed, politicians are infamous for doing so, but the author does not limit himself to situations where this is likely the case. Many of his quotes are simple, fluff statements where nothing nefarious was intended, but somehow the author tortures the statement to make the politician sound like a moustache-twirling villain.

This book fails in every way because his unfair treatment of his opposition means that even when he takes a position I agree with, I find myself apalled at the unfair treatment given to the opposition. It also left me feeling that political "unspeak" is not so bad because it is a form of language intended to protect the politician from distortive analysis like that the author applies in every paragraph. If nit-pickers like Mr. Poole were not in the media, politicians might be free to speak more plainly.

If a cop shoots an innocent by mistake, the politician wants to express dismay at an unjust death, but at the same time he recognizes the difficulties inherent in an urban cop's job, and how amazing it is that these incidents don't happen more often. The politician crafts a statement meant to split the baby ... to express the nuance the situation calls for. I have always felt politicians were under-estimating the intelligence of the public when they crafted these statements so delicately, and indeed felt a little insulted that the pol would assume that I cannot understand the issue on my own well enough that I need him to treat me like a child. But now, I know that there is at least one person out there dumb enough to not only NOT understand the nuance, but to deliberately parse every sentence to entrap the speaker who dares to try to speak plainly to his audience.

What a tool!

"Unspeak" might have made an interesting article for a magazine, but the material the author has gathered here doesn't warrant a book. It embeds the journalistic fantasy that seems to plague so many modern ink-stained wretches: the fantasy that, since objectivity cannot ever be accomplished, subjectivity is just fine thank you very much, and that anyone's subjective stance is therefore as objective as anyone else's. [Incidentally, this is part of the reason for the awful modern 'news' practice of having journalists interviewing each other.]

The book is really an embittered rant against (mostly) modern public political discourse. The author's particlar political prejudices shine brightly, and badly distract from the central theme of exploring political speech.

Minor errors (such as seeming to completely misunderstand the very old term "natural sciences") further disrupt the flow.

The book this one attempted to be still needs to be written.