A good book to read a little at a time, otherwise it will seem overwhelming. ( )

I just finished DOUBLETALK: THE LANGUAGE, CODE, AND JARGON OF A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION by Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark. The book was sent to me by the University Press of New England in exchange for an unbiased review.
Access points include an Introduction, Doubletalk (an alphabetical list of words, terms and phrases - a table of contents if you will), Notes and a List of Terms (index). The Notes section is (for me) a book in itself - the references and sources of all the ‘Doubletalk’ was as fascinating as reading the book. I accessed many of the references and was fully engaged in the articles, speeches and web sites. The index was helpful.
I enjoyed this book immensely. It was interesting, humorous (although this is not a ‘comedy’ book), well-documented, a satire of sorts, an etymology lesson, and a crash course in presidential election politics, history and ridicule.
Some of my favorite ‘Doubletalk’ terms are:
Bateson candidate is a term “coined by political scientist/columnist Jonathan Bernstein to describe politicians who are ‘oddly out of sync with normal time’. Bateson candidate comes from Star Trek and refers to Captain Morgan Bateson of the starship USS Bozeman, which encountered a time warp that trapped it 90 years ahead of time.”
Box Canyon is “a Wild West metaphor which describes a political situatiion from which you can’t easily extricate yourself and are vulnerable to attack.”
Inspector Javert is “the primary antagonist of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES, now applied to any investigator of a politician whose probing is perceived to be overzealous.” Hillary Clinton has faced several ‘Inspector Javert’.
Schrodinger’s cat is a quantum physics term which “is a famous thought experiment describing a cat that might be both alive and dead in a box; in politics, shorthand for someone or something in a strangely paradoxical situation.”
I could continue and ‘copy the entire book’ for this review, but I will stop and hope that you pick up the book yourself. It is so interesting and funny and intriguing - all rolled into one. Please look through the Notes and read as many references as you can - it is a fascinating look at out political system. ( )

A small collection of word gems that spice up an election race - the essential phrases that contort, distort, and even belie. So we learn about 'adults in the room', 'autopsy reports', 'cuckservatives', 'earned media', a 'rope-a-dope' or what it means to 'poke the bear'.

But when the author discusses the phrase 'job killing' and quotes arguments that try to tell us that 'regulation is not a significant factor affecting overall employment' or even better: 'environmental regualtion creates jobs!' then it is clear - he has not the slightest idea of economics.

However, I read it to the end and enjoyed a few phrases.
So: Three stars, not more, not less. ( )

Chuck McCutcheon’s and David Mark’s ‘Doubletalk’ is a timely addition to the political conversation.

With Presidential Primary and Caucus elections currently taking place in the USA, this small ebook (148p at the resolution I used reading the book in iBooks on an iPad Mini) gives the casual, and more intense, observer an interesting insight into what the candidates and the spin doctors mean when they utter certain phrases.

This reviewer lives in Australia where the Westminster Parliamentary system is used to elect a government. Hence, Australians don’t actually get to vote for the Head of Government (Prime Minister) nor for Head of State (that’s an English woman called Elizabeth II). However, much of the language explained in this book is certainly part of the electoral discourse in Australia.

For some unknown reason, I thought this was going to be a funny read, and while there was the occasional chuckle at some of the phrases, the tone is far more explanatory than comedic.

I was most impressed by the extensive notes included in the last quarter of the book, and took some time looking up (via hyperlink) the original texts where particular phrases had been used.

I have not read the authors’ previous work on political speech, ‘Dog Whistles…’ but will now be on the lookout for it. ( )

Anything about language is worth a look in my book so I clicked on this primer of one hundred words of political jargon with a few rarities from the arcane pollsters lexicon with anticipation. I was not disappointed, for besides being useful as a basic primer the authors enquiry mines into stuff that stimulates thought.
How America manufactures its language, or languages, is a source of continual wonder and envy for this Englishman - even though in this book's examples the object is to conceal, to muffle, to dampen rather than aim for George Orwell's "clear pane of glass". From Ad Hominem Attacks to Zugzwang the examples show how language can be woven, knotted and tightened using all kinds of shreds, the brighter colored the better, of source material: television, wild western mythology, german science-speak, touchy feely group speak and so on. It is the kind of enrichment and condensation of language that Shakespeare did for English. The question remains tho: outside the Beltway and the screen filled newspaper and television workspaces - is this a spoken language for the many?
I loved Bateson Candidate: "A term coined by political scientist/columnist Jonathan Bernstein in A Plain Blog about Politics March 3 2011 to describe politicians “who are oddly out of sync with normal time,” having disappeared from the public eye for years, if not decades, only to reappear to run for president as fringe candidates. Bateson candidate comes from Star Trek: It refers to Capt. Morgan Bateson of the starship USS Bozeman, which encountered a time warp that trapped it ninety years ahead of time"
Each word or phrase picked out from political discourse (at least the overheard public side of it) gets a neat, well referenced exposition with that lightness of touch we have come to expect from these authors. They also give us lovely, resonant snippets like the news that President Obama travels with a "tent of silence" with opaque sides and noise making devices that give him a pop-up secure area for sensitive conversations. So like the the hidden host! So like the traveling King of medieval times, willfully blinded by his retainers. And one wonders, seeing Trump, whether America is yearning for the monarchical system; the people shouting for his crowning and then (as happened just before democracy came to Greece) shouting for his ritual sacrifice.
The book tracks the path words take. Weaponize crawled out of its cold war bunker and, released for other duties, spread in the 1990's. McCutcheon and Mark quote Conservative pundit Guy Benson "What we’re seeing now, especially in an age of social media, is that a lot of this craziness is being born on campus but then it’s being weaponized in the media, weaponized in Washington, D.C., and it’s proliferating across the country and it’s sort of seeping into all elements of American life"
This is a book to dip and skim for pleasure and then click for reference. The profusion of sources mean you can get straight into the heartlands of the language making landscape of political America and make whatever extended journeys you wish.

Matthew Hilton is the author of Heavy Waters & Tap Once if Human