Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
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

Poole, Steven

Paperback

EtymologyLinguisticsWriting Instruction

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 0802143059
ISBN13: 9780802143051
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: May 10 2007
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.71
Height: 0.72 Width: 6.38 Depth: 8.25
Language: English
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.

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