INVESTIGATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING

THE WEIGHT OF WORDS AND THE ART OF SPIN DOCTORING:

UNSPEAK

Unspeak is the title of a book published last week (10 Feb 2006) about the words and expressions used by politicians and the media. To quote the definition on the front cover ‘Unspeak’ is "UNSPEAK - mode of speech that persuades by stealth, E.g., climate change, war on terror, ethnic cleansing, road map”. Below are the synopsis from Amazon and a catalogue description of the book

Description:
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.

http://www.pgw.com/catalog/catalog.asp?DBKey=218&CatalogKey=357375&Action=View&Index=Page&Book=365752&Order=18

Synopsis
Unspeak is language as a weapon. Every day, we are bombarded with those apparently simple words or phrases that actually conceal darker meanings. ‘Climate change' is less threatening than ‘Global Warming'; we say ethnic cleansing when we mean mass murder. As we absorb and repeat Unspeak we are accepting the messages that politicians, businessmen and military agencies wish us to believe. Operation Iraqi Freedom did more than put a positive spin on the American war with Iraq; it gave the invasion such a likeable phrase that the American news networks quickly adopted it as their tagline for reporting on the war. By repackaging the language we use to describe international affairs or domestic politics, Unspeak tries to make controversial issues unspeakable and, therefore, unquestionable. In this astounding book, Steven Poole traces the globalizing wave of modern Unspeak from culture wars to the culture of war and reveals how everyday words are changing the way we think.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316731005/qid=1139906239/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-9363881-2323863

There is nothing new in politicians using rhetorical devices to produce ‘spin’ on what they are saying, as the author himself points out in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 14 February (5 minutes - go to 7.42 in the running order) :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/listenagain_archive.shtml

Below are two articles reviewing the book, one published in Saturday’s Guardian (11th February 2006 -online edition) the other in a Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Herald.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1706247,00.html

http://www.sundayherald.com/53892

I would like you to read the reviews (noting who wrote the review), select a couple of the ‘unspeak’ words mentioned and do a quick Google search for these words to find at least 5 examples of them being used either by politicians or the media. We will then compile a mini ‘unspeak’ dictionary of our own just to see whether this use of language is as powerful as Pool makes out.