“An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language”
by Ali Almossawi and Alejandro Giraldo
(from the publisher)-
Tens of thousands of demonstrators packed the city’s streets on Friday. The actual count was 250,000. Why tens of thousands, then, and not a quarter million?
The grocer takes woke orders on its brands from a 17-year-old. The nameless 17-year-old’s opinion seems not worth considering. At what age will it be?
Rabbits zapped three badgers in an ambush last night, hours after six rabbits in a neighboring town lost their lives. Were the six rabbits the sole participants in losing their own lives? Those silly rabbits . . .
In this adorably illustrated book, old Mr. Rabbit is your guide to these and many more examples of loaded language. He mines real reporting (by respected and rogue media alike) to unmask rhetoric that shifts blame, erases responsibility, dog-whistles, plays on fear, or rewrites history–subtly or shamelessly. It takes a long pair of ears to hear what’s left unsaid–but when the very notion of truth is at stake, listening for “spin” makes all the difference. The creators of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments return at last with a desperately timely guide to rhetoric.
Public discourse? More like public discord. The battle cries of our culture wars are rife with “loaded language”—be it bias, slant, or spin. But listen closely, or you’ll miss what Ali Almossawi finds more frightening still: words that erase accountability, history, even identity through what they leave unsaid.
Speaking as wise old Mr. Rabbit, Almossawi leads us through a dark forest of rhetoric—aided by Orwell, Baldwin, and a squee-worthy cast of wide-eyed woodland creatures. Here, passive voice can pardon wrongdoers, statistics may be a smokescreen, gaslighting entraps the downtrodden, and irrelevant adjectives cement stereotypes. Emperor Squirrel isn’t naked; he has a clothes-free sartorial style. Mouse’s roof becomes flattened (Elephant’s foot just happens to be there at the time). And when keen-eyed Owl claims a foreign shore, he seems to be overlooking someone . . .
Fans of Almossawi’s An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments couldn’t ask for a better primer on the less logical ways that words can trick us. It takes a long pair of ears to hear what’s left unsaid—but when you’re a rabbit in a badger world, listening makes all the difference.
“This short book makes you smarter than 99% of the population. . . . The concepts within it will increase your company’s ‘organizational intelligence.’ . . . It’s more than just a must-read, it’s a ‘have-to-read-or-you’re-fired’ book.”—Geoffrey James, INC.com
“I love this illustrated book of bad arguments. A flawless compendium of flaws.”—Alice Roberts, PhD, anatomist, writer, and presenter of The Incredible Human Journey
