The following is an excerpt of a book review by Jack Schafer on Stephen Poole's 'Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality.' It describes common words and phrases that can encompass an entire political point of view without having to start or defend an argument, used especially by politicians and media giants that eventually filter into popular use and our subsequent interpretation of 'reality.' I chose this excerpt because it makes some brief but strong points on word usage in reference to sexual orientation and religious groups in America:


Poole calls community one of the most perfect political words in English because it can mean several things at once, or nothing at all. It can conjure things that don't exist, and deny the existence of those that do. It can be used in celebration, or in passive-aggressive attack. Its use in public language is almost always evidence of an Unspeak strategy at work.

The plasticity of community allows it to encompass geography, ethnicity, profession, hobby, or religion, and in the mouths of diplomats and journalists can expand to include everybody, as in the international community, a concept that Justice Antonin Scalia once described—rightly—as "fictional."

We're drawn to the "semantically promiscuous" word, Poole writes, because it allows us to simultaneously express our tolerance for a group and our discomfort. For example: the homosexual community and the black community. People rarely refer to the heterosexual community, the white community, or even the Christian community, because in the United States and Britain, they are the "default" positions and carry the "privilege of not having to be defined by a limiting 'identity.' " Likewise, a group defined by the majority as transgressive, say, the Ku Klux Klan, would never qualify as a "community" even though it organizes itself with the same conscious effort as the "anti-war community."

1 thank you note | please