Unspeak

Unspeak is a label coined by Steven Poole to describe loaded words which are often used in neutral senses. It's also the title of Poole's book on the same topic.

'Surgical strike', for example, is used in war reporting to describe a military attack in which only the specific target is destroyed, with no damage to civilians or surrounding infrastructure. 'Surgical strike' is unspeak because, although it is used in a descriptive sense, it also has ideological connotations. 'Surgical' suggests a fine degree of precision, just as a medical surgeon performs delicate surgical procedures. Furthermore, during medical surgery the patient is anaesthetised, thus 'surgical strike' implies painlessness. Finally, military action is linguistically equated with the removal of disease, thus giving it positive associations. By describing military operations as 'surgical attacks', politicians are communicating a subtle ideological message, which is unthinkingly repeated by journalists who adopt the same terminlogy in their war reporting.

Poole shows how so much political and military discourse utilises metaphors which have been chosen by spin doctors for their ideological implications, and, more worryingly, how these unspeak terms have pervasively entered conventional public discourse as standard terms. Kenneth Burke describes this process, when our selection of terminology limits our perceptions, as 'terministic screening', and Quentin Skinner refers to 'evaluative-descriptive terms', words which are employed objectively despite their argumentative origins.