Nuance in a time of sharp contrast

Words are powerful...but power is not always the use of force.

I recalled this as I listened,. in amazement to linguist Geoff Nunberg's careful analysis of the phrase Deep State at the end of yesterday's Fresh Air broadcast. You can check it out here:


Nunberg uses his characteristic thoughtful and precise language to unpack a term that has slipped into everyday political use (or at least, into regular tweets from our Fearless Leader and his cronies...) and to describe why it is so troubling. What I admire about this essay is how ti takes its time to reach a conclusion, supporting it withe evidence, so that when we arrive it seems entirely reasonable. So reducing it to a soundbite seems especially in approprtiate, but the sentence that really hooked me was this one:

It's that suggestion of ruthless efficiency that makes "the deep state" sound more ominous than a name like "the invisible government." We think of a government as a collection of people, with all their foibles and frailties [...] Whereas the specter of the "deep state" is chilling precisely because it seems to be so capable. Hidden from view, it orchestrates complex schemes across a half-dozen agencies, buries incriminating documents, compromises inconvenient opponents with spurious allegations.

What Nunberg is doing in the essay is an important you-can-do-this-at-home strategy for finding bullshit. He replaces the new term with another, theoretically synonymous one that shines a light on the connotations of the first one.  I have always liked to use this strategy when folks complain about the tyranny 'political correctness.' Replace that Fox news talking point with "showing respect for others and their identities" in most phrases and you see what these folks are actually complaining about....

All of this puts me in the mind of an article by Nicholas Lehman that appeared in the July 31, 2000, issue of the New Yorker. Lehman carefully examined George W. Bush's use of metonym in contrast to Al Gore's use of metaphor and hinted at the carefully controlled language being deployed by politicians to shape their messages.

To pretend these are 'just words' is to be naive about how speakers and writers seek to shape our thoughts and behaviors through the choice of words. Nunberg's essay is a sobering reminder that we can be controlled as easily by language as by overt use of force...