Tom Browne
Language can disguise the motives of individuals, corporations and governments. However, if it is looked at through a critical lens such as the one Steven Poole promotes, language can reveal perhaps more than its masters intended. Thoughts can be elaborately and deceitfully dressed up by the reinvention of titles and the representation of events. Herein is Unspeak: a mode of speech that persuades by stealth. In his 2006 publication, Steven Poole sets up demonstration after demonstration of political language, campaign slogans and environmental titles which have avoided our critical attention. Don't be distracted by their dress, pleads Poole.
While the recognition and documentation of political spin is not new (as Poole prefaces, 'Unspeak has probably been with us for as long as there have been politics' (12)) he recontextualises and applies it to today's increasingly convoluted world. Notable forerunners of Poole’s ideas include George Orwell and his construction of 'newspeak' in 1984. Also, the famous sociologist C. Wright Mills commented on 'socspeak' in The Sociological Imagination. As he admonished, 'most Socspeak is unrelated to any complexity of subject matter or thought' (Mills: 220), its primary achievement is to create a divide between the presenter and the audience.
As Poole defines it, 'Unspeak is a kind of invasive procedure: it wants to bypass critical thinking and implant a foreign body of opinion directly in the soft tissue of the brain' (238). Who would have thought, for example, that The Greening Earth Society existed as a front for coal companies who campaigned against environmental regulation? Or that the The American Forest Resource Alliance was established to challenge 'proposed federal laws to protect ancient forests' (64).
After heavy lobbying of the UN in the early 1990s by American and Saudi oil investors, 'global warming' was removed completely from the 1992 UN Framework Convention. The UN spoke instead of a process called 'climate change'. The replacement of a more accurate title with an ambiguous one is a clear example of Poole’s thesis. Indeed 'climate change' doesn't even concede which way the climate is changing, for better or worse? Is the melting of polar ice caps perhaps a natural climate phenomenon? The change in title is particularly corrupt for two reasons. Firstly, before the title 'global warming' was made official, many scientists were concerned that it was a title not drastic enough; other suggestions tabled included 'climate chaos' and 'global overheating' (45). Secondly, the state of our polar ice caps is progressively declining, so the condition has in fact worsened, its representation to the public has been made more palatable.
Poole's contempt for deliberate ambiguity is almost violent. By labelling a group a 'community', he says, one 'can conjure things that don't exist, and deny the existence of those that do' (25), because what, after all, is a 'community'? The term's use imports notions of homogenous interests and shared goals of mutual help. 'Community' is an ambiguity, suggests Poole, which is invoked by groups who wish to be seen in a positive light. Consider its use in the context of the 'international community', or the 'Muslim community'. When we consider the countries of the world, which of them is included in the international community? Do they coexist peacefully as in a community, helping each other toward a common goal? The banner 'Muslim community' tends also to imply a homogeneous ideology which implicates all Muslims, however, it also effectively ostracises them by identifying them as an external group defined entirely in terms of their beliefs. Anti-Muslim sentiment can be deftly smuggled into our conversations by referring to Muslims as a 'community'. The inclusion of Muslim extremists under the heading 'Muslim community' is a particularly contentious distinction or lack of distinction as it were. While an alternative treatment may criticise Poole for reading too much into an on-the-spot word choice, he remains adamant that all uses of the word community cover over important distinctions which do not serve the interests of the speaker.
Unspeak is continually being resonated by the mass media. Television, and particularly, written tabloids are highly susceptible to gush unspeak discourses because politicians have noticed these 'have an inbuilt structural bias towards the snappy phrase, the soundbite' (8). Our preferences and perceptions are shaped by leading corporate forces in our world as aided deliberately through the media argues Poole (adopting quite a Gramscian approach). Unspeak littered through daily papers can be seen to represent an increasingly complex system of domination over our lives. When the headline declares a 'tragedy', Poole bites back, 'the use of "tragedy" to avoid accepting responsibility or pointing the finger has long been widespread' (78). When the reporters speak of 'terrorists', Poole says that the word today is more a weapon to silence than an accurate description.
It is interesting to consider the assumptions of Poole's writing and the choice of his examples. By his barrage of criticisms, the author's contempt for Tony Blair, George Bush and influential corporations is obvious. Poole’s political persuasion however remains unspoken in his book, and I would argue, that this could perhaps be to its detriment.
To apply a Marxist treatment to his thesis appears to strengthen it and allow a greater depth of explanation. Through a Marxist reading we get far more a sense of why unspeak is used. It is by and large the capitalist class who have the power to mass produce unspeak strategies and it thus serves directly their interests. Unspeak always serves the intentions of the speaker and seeks to torpedo a listeners' thoughts before they have the chance to respond. Poole is perhaps guilty of delving only into fragments of the things than repulse him and not providing a suggestion as to why unspeak is used.
While we may remain a comfortable distance from Orwell’s dystopia, this hardly stops Poole taking a most didactic approach. 'You don't have to be a specialist to resist the tide of unspeak; you just have to pay attention' (13). His research is compelling and at times chilling as we realise the questions he raises cannot be left rhetorical.
Bibliography
Mills, C. Wright The Sociological Imagination Oxford University Press, New York 1959.
Orwell, George Nineteen Eighty-Four Penguin Books, London 1949.