Unspeak [Hardcover]

When I started reading this book about politicians and their abuse of language, I was so taken by its author's elegant style and mordant, black humour that I didn't notice what a serious piece of work it is. In fact, as becomes increasingly obvious, this book is informed by a huge amount of research and by something close to moral fury. Poole shows that we should all wake up and attend to the words our leaders use in the media, that if we only do this we will see what strange and twisted "unspeak" those words are. If you've ever watched the Daily Show on TV, you will know the regular thing they do where they play a clip - of Cheney or Kerry or whoever - and it cuts back to Jon Stewart, who, just with a look, or a blink, or a raised eyebrow, can suddenly, somehow, make you realise what utter lies you have just been listening to. Its a dazzling technique, and I don't quite know how Stewart does it, but Poole does something very similar with his book, again and again and again. Strongly recommended, and if you like it, you should also read Jon Stewart's book "Democracy", which is also brilliant.

Does it matter what politicians say? Does it matter how they say it? Yes and yes. Poole shows how politicians' language is thick with euphemism - but anybody could do that. What he does brilliantly is look closely at this "euphemism" to see what ideological baggage is being imported along with it, as well as what is not being said and how the alternative view is being unspoken. Politicians should fear this book and journalists should be required to read it.

The book is crisply written without unnecessary muddle, and is charged with relevant facts to support his arguments. After reading it, every time you hear about "ethnic cleansing" your blood will curdle, and every time you read about "abuse" instead of "torture" at Guantanamo Bay you will cringe. And people who complain that it is mostly about the politcal Right Wing are really missing the obvious: first, Poole's arguments are actually pretty balanced, and his arguments can be generalized easily ("Unspeak" itself knows no political categories); second, critiquing the language of the left-wing, in the English-speaking world and especially in the United States, is like stomping on the fingers of a man in a coma.

George Orwell underestimated the politicians of the 21st century. In 1984, the blunt tool of "doublethink" used simple opposites; the ministry for war was called "the ministry of love", for instance. But doublethink can easily be translated back into English, you just reverse it.

Unthink is more sophisticated, here the ministry of war is "the ministry of defence". Surely a body tasked with defence can never do anything bad or offensive, because defence is morally justifiable, right? The principle of unspeak is to persuade by stealth, to alter assumptions inherent in the definition of things. Who are you more afraid of: a "suspected terrorist" or a "terrorist suspect"? The former emphasises ambiguity, the suspicion that they might be a terrorist. The latter emphasises the terrorist as the definition with suspicion as an afterthought.

At an even higher level of sophistication though, an unspeaker can play language any way they want. So the proponents of "intelligent design" state that creationism is a theory, and as such has as much validity as evolution. However, in the case of creationism they are elevating it to the status of a theory. In fact, it is no such thing as it is not falsifiable, has no supporting evidence, and has no predictive value. But by defining it as a "theory" they are reflecting in the glow of scientific terminology. In their attacks on "neo-Darwinists", however, they say that evolution is "just" a theory, and here they use theory in the fluffy, not quite sure, kind of sense. It's a cunning trick.

If the examples above turned on any little lights in your head at all, you have to buy this book. Steven Poole has a rare and valuable talent in non-fiction; he writes sentences that makes you say "Yeah! I had a vague inkling about that too but he's gone and put it into words!"

I will agree that there is a lot of focus here on the Iraq war and George W Bush era of politics. However, had the author written a book about the rape of language but neglected to quote Donald Rumsfeld at every turn he would be doing his readers a great disservice. The Neo-cons have made Catch 22 a reality, and named it "Operation Enduring Freedom". It was going to be called "Operation Iraqi Liberation" but then they realised that the acronym for that was OIL. Enjoy.