Daniel Nelson writes that “we talk our way into war and talk our way out of it” (Dedaić & Nelson [henceforth DN], p. 449). Drawing on a diverse array of methodological and theoretical perspectives and an equally wide range of subject matters, Mirjana Dedaić and Daniel Nelson's edited volume on the role of language in war, and the effects of war on language, is a sprawling, perhaps unwieldy collection that opens up a number of important avenues of investigation in this gravely important but as yet undefined field of study. Sandra Silberstein focuses her book much more narrowly on the language of politics and news media in the wake of the September 11 tragedy. Despite their differences, both books address similar themes: (i) declaring war, or the language used by political leaders to justify military action; (ii) propaganda, or the construction of a war narrative by the media, and the use of political discourse to divide populations; (iii) language politics, or how wars shape language policy; and (iv) controlling speech, or the language used to grant or deny legitimacy in political debates. With the exception of language politics, not touched on by Silberstein, these themes are addressed equally by both books.

Declaring war. Paul Chilton's chapter in At war with words starts with a quote from a speech President Bush gave in 2000. Bush recalls a time when we knew who our enemies were: “It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who they are, but we know they're there” (DN, 95). Although he doesn't discuss the quote explicitly, there is a striking contrast between Bush's binary moral universe and the nuanced complexity Chilton examines in President Clinton's speech justifying military intervention in Kosovo. Clinton's Kosovo speech eschews a “just war discourse” in favor of a “lengthy appeal to the need for self-preservation” (122). However, Bush's speeches declaring a “war on terrorism” in the wake of 9/11 reveal a remarkable consistency with the “us versus them” binary moral framework used in his 2000 speech. These speeches are the focus of Silberstein's first two chapters, although she does not seem aware of similar themes in Bush's pre-9/11 rhetoric. Silberstein focuses, instead, on Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Day of infamy” speech, made following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (15). By drawing on this speech, Bush was able to frame an ill-understood attack by a hidden enemy in terms of a ready-made war narrative. In his speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the following Sunday, Bush further linked the “religious and military nature of his call [to war]” (53). Silberstein argues that it was with this second speech that Bush was able to finally overcome his “presumed inadequacies and his status as America's first appointed president” (39), gaining for himself newfound legitimacy as the nation's commander-in-chief, as well as its “national pastor” (53). Despite their complementary conclusions, stylistically these two authors couldn't be further apart. Silberstein is writing for a general audience and quotes liberally from the speeches she discusses. Chilton, in contrast, devotes himself to carefully mapping the underlying cognitive structure of the text. Unfortunately, Chilton's three-dimensional graphs of these cognitive maps are more befuddling than illuminating.

Propaganda. In her chapter “Liberal parasites and other creepers,” Kathryn Ruud informs us that the successful use of propaganda by the Nationalist Socialist Third Reich drew its inspiration from England's innovations during World War I (DN, 29). After laying out the central features of propaganda, she proceeds to demonstrate effectively that the discourse of conservative talk-show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, contains many of these same features. Although she is careful to trace a line back to England, Ruud seems guilty of damning by association with her constant parallelism between Nazi propaganda and contemporary talk-show rhetoric. She also overlooks American influences on Limbaugh and his compatriots, such as the vitriolic Father Coughlin, whose anti-Communist, anti-Semitic radio show had an audience of 45 million (more than twice that of Limbaugh) in 1930 (Neiwert 2003). Kweku Osam's chapter on the discourse of the Ghanian Reform Movement similarly highlights key linguistic features employed in order to polarize public opinion. But Osam's list of features seem to be constitutive of all political discourse and fails to teach us anything specific about the rhetoric of the Ghanian Reform Movement.

Both Renée Dickason's “Advertising for peace as political communication” and the fifth chapter of Silberstein's book, “Selling America,” look at more positive uses of propaganda. Dickason explores a unique effort to use television ads to promote peace in Northern Ireland, and Silberstein analyzes efforts by the Ad Council of America to promote both patriotism and tolerance. But whereas Dickason restricts her analysis to the ad campaign itself, tracing how it changed over time, Silberstein includes an analysis of popular reception as well. Drawing from an online discussion hosted on the Ad Council's own website, Silberstein finds that ambiguity in their message led to differing interpretations. While some people felt that the ads celebrated America's diversity, others were upset that the ads left out important categories of Americans, including Muslim men and women in Islamic dress, turbaned Sikhs, and even members of the Armed Forces (118–19). In another chapter, Silberstein is similarly able to make effective use of the disjuncture between official and popular discourse. By employing exclusionary language specific to the predominantly white, Irish, and male firefighters' union to which he belonged (100–2), a New York City firefighter, Mike Moran, stirred up controversy. Commentators struggled with the contradiction of having to laud America's heroes without condoning such rhetoric (although some writers had no problems endorsing Moran's celebration of “brotherhood”).

Two chapters in At war with words complement each other by, separately, addressing media and public discourse. Alexander Pollak's “When guilt becomes a foreign country” explores how Austrian newspaper accounts of World War II construct narratives “aimed at superseding guilt and responsibility” for the role of Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers in committing Nazi atrocities (DN, 205). Gertraud Benke and Ruth Wodak's “Remembering and forgetting” provides a related analysis of popular narratives on the same theme. Benke & Wodak analyze differences in how each generation responded to interviews conducted at an Austrian exhibition documenting the complicity of the Wehrmacht in committing Nazi war crimes. While these chapters work well together, it would have been nice to have had some explicit discussion of the relationship between media-produced and popular narratives.

Language politics. Four chapters in DN investigate the effect of wars on language policy. Two of these essays look at how the separation of speech communities through war also furthers linguistic divisions. Keith Langston and Anita Peti-Stantić find that efforts to create a purer Croatian, free of Serbian influence, were only partially successful. Ordinary people had a much easier time identifying foreign loanwords as non-Croatian than words with shared Slavic roots which were identified as “Serbian” by Croatian linguists (DN, 267–68). Marilena Karyolemou highlights the irony of Greek Cypriots offering bilingual higher education in both Turkish and Greek when political separation of the two communities makes it unnecessary actually to implement such policies (DN, 367). The other two essays look at the shifting relationship between local and official languages on islands whose official language has changed with the fortunes of war. Rumiko Shinzato's essay traces the rise, fall, and revitalization of Okinawan (DN, 305). Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain's chapter on Palau explores the effect of Japanese and American wartime occupation on the languages of the Pacific island nation of Palau. The Japanese sought to reduce the power and prestige of the local elite, offering education and economic opportunities to the whole population, while the United States sought to co-opt the local elite and foster economic dependency to turn the population away from the Japanese. Following independence, the Palauan elites used their Palauan linguistic capital to legitimate their own authority, while educating their children at English-speaking schools. Matsumoto and Britain argue that this serves to stabilize the elite's social position, “while reinforcing the powerless position of the ‘others’ they pretend to support” (DN, 337).

Controlling speech. Silberstein's chapter “The new McCarthyism” discusses a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA; founded in 1995 by Lynne Cheney, wife of U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney) which includes a list of more than 100 quotes by scholars accused of being “short on patriotism” (138). Silberstein focuses on “common logical fallacies” found throughout the report. So scathing is Silberstein's dissection of this document that, in the end, one wonders if the document itself deserves such a detailed line-by-line analysis. Although she does briefly discuss responses to the list, there is little effort to place the ACTA report within a larger context of debates over the supposedly “liberal bias” of American universities, or legal attacks on freedom of speech following the announcement of the “war on terror” (Lichtblau 2003, American Civil Liberties Union 2004, Rosenthal 2004).

The role of patriotism in controlling speech is also discussed in Mark Allan Peterson's contribution to DN, “American warriors speaking American.” Examining the metapragmatics of congressional debate, he argues that congressmen never challenge the goals of a bill, only whether or not the bill will achieve these goals (432). So, when Congressman Patrick Kennedy challenged the political motivations of an English-only bill before the House, he strayed from the unwritten ground rules of the debate (433). Peterson explores how Kennedy's lack of military service, as well as the complex turn-taking rules of the House, are manipulated by both sides in an effort to return the debate to its “normal routine” (436). The politics of congressional debate is, for Peterson, a “battle for control” (443) over the metadiscursive practices that regulate political speech.

Two articles included in DN don't easily fit into the four themes I've laid out in this review. Suzanne Wong Scollon's essay explores the coverage of the Taiwan missile crisis of 1996 in the Hong Kong news media. She argues that while both the government-run and independent media claim “objectivity,” the “liberal press” uses more “strongly evaluative verbs of saying,” while the government media use more neutral language. Finally, Robert Tucker and Theodore Prosise's chapter “The language of atomic science and atomic conflict” argues that our language is inadequate to deal with phenomena outside the range of human experience (130), such as subatomic physics or nuclear warfare. However, if our language is capable of producing vast amounts of discourse on the afterlife, the spiritual realm, utopias, and other nebulous topics, it is unclear why quantum mechanics, about which we know far more, should impose any special strain.

Whether one contemplates the twisted metaphors of war speeches, the half-truths of the news media, language policies and hate speech aimed at dividing populations, or attempts to silence dissent, after reading these two books one has a greater appreciation of the many ways in which language and war are interrelated. Silberstein's slim volume is the more accessible of the two, suitable for undergraduate students and nonspecialists. It is also a more tightly focused book. At war with words contains many excellent essays, including important contributions by prominent scholars, but the wide range of material included means that the book will likely be remembered more for its individual parts than for their sum. Taken together, these books lay the foundation for research into questions that, unfortunately, seem more pressing with each passing day.