Bookplanet: why they say "extraordinary rendition" instead of "the US policy to kidnap and torture people"

A new language, spoken all around us -- John Preston reviews Unspeak by Steven Poole

According to Steven Poole, we live in an age in which language is being increasingly bled of its proper meaning. At the same time, phrases are constantly passing into circulation whose surface blandness hides a host of political messages. The result is Unspeak, 'a mode of speech that persuades by stealth'.

Let us start with a comparatively mild example. The group Friends of the Earth has a name which neatly consigns anyone to disagrees with them to the category of Enemy of the Earth - which is a pretty nasty thing for anyone to be. It also 'smuggles in' the subtextual impression that the entire planet is a living organism, and therefore something that you can actually make friends with.

The secret here, says Poole, is to pack the maximum amount of persuasion into the smallest possible space. 'Rhetorically, Unspeak is a kind of invasive procedure: it wants to bypass critical thinking and implant a foreign body of opinion directly into the soft tissue of the brain.' Unspeak deliberately recalls Orwell's Newspeak in 1984, but whereas Newspeak sought to erase words from common usage, Unspeak works in more subtle ways. What's effectively happening here, at its worst extreme, is that language is being dehumanised to keep any notions of personal responsibility to a minimum.

Army officers - most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq - fondly referred to 'surgical strikes' - a phrase that manages to imply that what is actually being attacked is disease. The enemy is no longer other human beings, but some disgusting sickness that can be cleanly and painlessly removed. By the same token, 'collateral damage' also succeeded in wiping any specks of blood from the minds of the public. After all, 'damage' is something we usually do to buildings, while 'collateral' sounds reassuringly like something that happens on the sidelines.

But it's not just in the military that Unspeak has made giant strides; it's everywhere. In the last few years the word refugee has been replaced by 'asylum seeker', thereby shifting the emphasis from what a person is fleeing in the first place to the demands he is making on the country he has arrived in.

Ever since the bombing of the Twin Towers, we have lived in a world where shadowy figures defined as 'terrorist suspects' seek to do their worst. What, though, is a terrorist suspect? In legal terms, it means nothing. Yet what the phrase does is first define someone as a terrorist - 'and then grudgingly acknowledge that the basis for such a definition is as yet untested.'

If there is a maestro of Unspeak then it is US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, who, as Poole concedes with reluctant admiration, displays awesome rhetorical inventiveness. 'Like a bebop saxophonist, Rumsfeld takes a theme, crawls into it, turns it inside out, and rebuilds it at crazy angles.' In one justly celebrated example of Rumsfeld's Unspeak, he was asked how he would define victory in the 'War on Terror'. Rumsfeld replied, 'I say that victory is persuading the American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick matter that's going to be over in a month or a year or even five years.' In other words, victory consists of persuading people that victory is impossible.

Like Humpty Dumpty, Rumsfeld has realised that 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - nothing more nor less.' It's probably the kiss of death to any book to describe it as 'important'. None the less, Poole has managed to nail one of the most insidious spectres of modern life, doing so in a manner that's constantly stimulating as well as entertaining. His style is concise, perceptive and light enough to see off any risk of pedantry.

It seems mildly odd that around 90 per cent of the people he cites should work for The Guardian - or rather not so odd since Poole himself works there - and he also uses the word 'opine', which I personally would make punishable by hanging. These cavils aside, Unspeak is a fine piece of work which deserves to be read by anyone who has ever suspected that language can be made to conceal even more than it appears to reveal.