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

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


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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. Climate change is less threatening than global warming; we say ethnic cleansing when we mean mass murder, A completely partisan argument can be packed into a sound bite. 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 make an opposing view ever more difficult to enunciate. In this fascinating book, Poole traces modern Unspeak--from extremist to weapons of mass destruction--and reveals how the evolution of language changes the way we think. Propaganda becomes public diplomacy, and sound science (a phrase actually coined by tobacco giant Philip Morris) becomes a tool with which to instill a fear and distrust of legitimate scientific research.

County Kerry, Ireland, 1825. NORA, bereft after the sudden death of her beloved husband, finds herself alone and caring for her young grandson Micheal. Micheal cannot speak and cannot walk and Nora is desperate to know what is wrong with him. What happened to the healthy, happy grandson she met when her daughter was still alive? MARY arrives in the valley to help Nora just as the whispers are spreading: the stories of unexplained misfortunes, of illnesses, and the rumours that Micheal is a changeling child who is bringing bad luck to the valley. NANCE's knowledge keeps her apart. To the new priest, she is a threat, but to the valley people she is a wanderer, a healer. Nance knows how to use the Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality download ebook pdf plants and berries of the woodland; she understands the magic in the old ways. And she might be able to help Micheal. As these three women are drawn together in the hope of restoring Micheal, their world of folklore and belief, of ritual and stories, tightens around them. It will lead them down a dangerous path, and force them to question everything they have ever known.


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Author: Steven Poole
Number of Pages: 282 pages
Published Date: 10 May 2007
Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Publication Country: New York, United States
Language: English
ISBN: 9780802143051
Download Link: Click Here
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