Chapter 23 - Review of ‘Unspeak’ by Steven Poole
How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality
Steven Poole is a cunning linguist.
He disses George Orwell, just to make himself look better, then admits with fake modesty that he’s no expert and just a close reader.
He quotes Noam Chomsky, disingenuously and out of context, just to make Chomsky look like a dick.
He then sets up straw-man arguments so that he can, oh so cleverly, knock them down.
He sets himself the incredibly hard task of taking apart the words of such noted thinkers, intellectuals and luminaries as George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.
Our governments are lying to us and use language to hide it. Who knew? Who knew.
Some earlier chapters are excellent and persuasive.
But often, despite agreeing with the premise of the book, I found myself irritated by Poole’s grating tone of smugness.
He goes off-the-rails at the end, focusing in later chapters almost exclusively on the war on terror.
Even though this is were we should care most, and his arguments should be stronges…
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