War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11

Book Reviews | Feb 3rd, 2007

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Author: Sandra Silberstein
Publisher: Routledge
Genre: Political Science
Pages: 224
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com link

An applied linguist, Sandra Silberstein looks at how language helped transform America after the events of September 11. Specifically, she examines how Bush’s speeches were designed to heal America and prepare it for war; how public service announcements promoted tolerance in an environment of revenge; on the approach the media took in educating the public on Islam; and how “patriotic” rhetoric attempted to squash dissent.

I had many problems with this book, both in content and execution. While the premise itself is promising, Silberstein rarely goes into detail regarding the field of linguistics, or how linguistics really applies to the many phrases she quotes. She shows examples of rhetoric encountered following 9/11, but doesn’t tie it into the greater picture of linguistics, sociology and mass psychology. I was expecting a more academic work, but this book only 140 pages after appendices and notes seems rushed and shallow.

I felt the execution was lacking as well as the content. Given the brevity, she chose only a handful of examples for each of her chapters. It felt as if she were assigning all of the changes in the national identity to one speech, one interview, one advertisement, and one documentary. An in-depth analysis of one CNN man-on-the-street interview is especially excruciating in its pointlessness. After all, who remembers that one exchange, and how much could it have affected America? Or perhaps Silberstein doesn’t mean to say that her examples were the prime movers for changes, but just reflections of them. It’s very unclear.

To Silberstein’s credit, it’s difficult to pinpoint her political slant, if she has one. Early in the book, she praises Bush for his skill at using correct language to comfort America, but later on she chides the ACTA (Lynn Cheney and Joe Lieberman’s McCarthy-esque organization) for their attack on free speech in higher education. But as a linguist, it’s strange that she praises Bush’s speech, but forgets about his nonverbal language. While many experts agree that his post-9/11 speeches were the most important and best-written political speeches in years, Bush’s delivery was underwhelming: there were many Americans who were not comforted by his big-eyed, deer-caught-in-headlights look on his face; his slow and stiff demeanor; the delay in addressing the public while being shuttled around to secure locations; and his shaky misnomers (sorry but “We’re gonna get these folks” wasn’t charmingly folksy, nor did it instill much confidence in his leadership).

Further, while the right words were said, were they effective? Silberstein announces with certainty that Bush’s speeches healed the nation, that PSA’s and the media educated the public on Islam, etc., but there is little backup to these dubious assertions.

Even without supporting evidence, many of the basic points of each chapter could have been expounded upon. “Selling America” had precious little on how the corporate sector used patriotism as a selling point. “From News to Entertainment” lacked just that: how news media fashioned the events of 9/11 into a constant deluge of disturbing images, human interest stories, and editorializing more to keep viewers tuned in and zombified than to convey actual news or offer perspective. And her examples seem to be from a scant number of CNN segments; there is very little about newspaper coverage, the Internet, and the differences in tone and language across media outlets.

The most interesting chapter, “The New McCarthyism”, is also too narrow on one example (the ACTA). The pigeonholing of liberals and critics of Bush’s foreign and domestic policy as traitors and unpatriotic wasn’t just found in a report by the ACTA; obviously, a war of words had its battlegrounds in many areas: tv news, Internet, editorials, etc. A book on the “war of words” should have focused mainly on this piece, as it is where the nation’s identity had transformed under such strong rhetoric, which in many ways didn’t unite the nation, but divided it further.

Published in September 2002, probably to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attacks, War of Words fails to illuminate socio-political changes through linguistics. As well as lacking much insightful analysis, it suffers from fallacy of exclusion, to misuse a linguistics term. More in-depth commentary, more background information on linguistics (and how the field applies to the book), and a broader pool of references from which to pull examples would have made this a much meatier book.

Bottom Line: Political science via linguistics, but short on words.
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