{"id":12730,"date":"2012-08-20T09:20:18","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T14:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/?p=12730"},"modified":"2012-08-20T21:33:17","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T02:33:17","slug":"language-intelligence-lessons-on-persuasion-from-jesus-shakespeare-lincoln-and-lady-gaga-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/archives\/2012\/08\/language-intelligence-lessons-on-persuasion-from-jesus-shakespeare-lincoln-and-lady-gaga-a-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Intelligence – Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga: A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Any book that manages to link together the lessons of the Bible, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, and Lady Gaga (not to mention Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Seinfeld), can’t be all bad. With Joe Romm’s new book Language Intelligence<\/em><\/a>, it is, in fact, ALL good. There are lessons galore for the scientists among us who value public outreach and communication. The book is a de facto<\/em> field guide for recognizing and assimilating many of the key tools of persuasive language and speech, something that is ever more important to science communicators who face the daunting challenge of having to communicate technical and nuanced material to an audience largely unfamiliar with the lexicon of science, sometimes agnostic or even unreceptive to its message, and—in the case of contentious areas like climate change and evolution—already subject to a concerted campaign to misinform and confuse them.
\n<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, as Romm notes, \u201cScientists are not known for being great communicators\u201d. And so you will forgive me, I hope, if I fail to convince you to read his book. But you really should<\/em> read his book! You should definitely<\/em> read his book! In fact, you need<\/em> to read this book! Have I mentioned that you ought to read Romm\u2019s book?<\/p>\n

Repetition<\/em> is in fact one of the key tools of effective communication that Romm emphasizes. Channeling the late Johnny Cochran, Romm tell us \u201cIf you don\u2019t repeat, you can\u2019t compete\u201d. That is hardly the only lesson in this book for would-be communicators. The book is packed with great examples from history, ancient and modern, of how rhetoric<\/em> (defined by Churchill, as Romm informs us, as “The subtle art of combining the various elements that separately mean nothing and collectively mean so much in an harmonious proportion”) serves as the scaffolding of effective communication. The materials filling that scaffolding are the ‘figures of speech’, many of which are familiar to us, even if we don’t use them as frequently or effectively as we could. They include the use of hyberbole<\/em> (extravagant exaggeration, and antithesis<\/em> (the pairing of contrasting words or ideas), puns<\/em>, and irony<\/em> in its various forms. They include the use of wit and aphorisms, and metaphors<\/em> (especially, where appropriate, extended metaphors<\/em>) and devices such as alliteration<\/em> and chiasmus<\/em> (the repetition of words in reverse order). Romm provides numerous illustrative examples. In the case of chiasmus<\/em> my favorite is from the James Bond Movie “Die Another Day”. [This is, incidentally enough, the only Bond flick to talk about climate change, via an ironic<\/em> comment from the main villain: “Global Warming. Its a terrible<\/em> thing”]. In one scene, Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) tells the curmudgeonly “Q” (played by John Cleese; I preferred Desmond Llewelyn. So call me old school) “You\u2019re smarter than you look”. Q, in reply, quips “Better than looking smarter than you are”. It is the figures of speech<\/em>, used in proper measure and appropriate context, that comprise not only a memorable line from a movie, but the key tools to effective writing and oratory.<\/p>\n

Romm’s key lessons to would-be communicators, in short, are:<\/p>\n

\n1. Use short, simple words.
\n2. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition is the essential element of all persuasion.
\n3. Master irony and foreshadowing. They are central elements of popular culture, modern politics, and mass media for a reason\u2014they help us make sense of the stories of our lives and other people\u2019s lives.
\n4. Use metaphors to paint a picture, to connect what your listeners already know to what you want them to know. Metaphors may be the most important figure as well as the most underused and misused.
\n5. Create an extended metaphor when you have a big task at hand, like framing a picture-perfect speech or launching a major campaign.
\n6. If you want to avoid being seduced, learn the figures of seduction. If you want to debunk a myth, do not repeat that myth.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many of you will know Romm mostly if not exclusively for his \u201cClimate Progress\u201d<\/a> blog, and his round-the-clock, take-no-prisoners debunking of the disinformation efforts of climate change inactivists and clean energy opponents. So I suspect you, like I, will be pleasantly surprised as you are introduced to a completely different Joe Romm that you never knew existed. Joe demonstrates a remarkable intellectual breadth and depth that goes well beyond his obvious expertise in the area of climate and energy policy. His message in ‘Language Intelligence’ has a generality that extends to all areas of public discourse, whether it be politics, education, or entertainment. But make no mistake. His lessons have great relevance in the domain of climate change communication, and particular salience for those interested in communicating climate change\u2014the science, the impacts, the risks—to a broader public audience. As a rule we don’t, for example, use metaphor–a particularly powerful tool for communicating complicated concepts in a simple and accessible way–nearly enough. Though, as Romm notes, we are getting better. One example of an effective metaphor that he provides (and indeed, which I sometimes use myself) is the notion of “weather on steroids” as a way of communicating the statistical nature of the subtle–but very real–influence that climate change is having on certain types of extreme weather events. Just as many of the home runs hit by a baseball player on steroids were almost certainly due to the taking of steroids–even if you can’t prove that any one home run resulted from it–so too is it likely that the record-breaking heat we are seeing in the U.S. this summer of 2012 is very likely due, in substantial part, to the impact of human-caused climate change and global warming.<\/p>\n

Climate change critics have indeed understood the importance of language and rhetoric for some time. In the infamous leaked “Luntz Memo” of 2002, Republican pollster Frank Luntz advised his clients–fossil fuel interests–how they could more effectively use clever word choice and rhetoric–indeed, the figures of speech themselves–to reframe the public discourse over climate change, to help convince the public that there was no scientific consensus, that climate change was not a threat, and that any actions to mitigate climate change would themselves be dangerous. Already, the forces of climate change inaction were sharpening their rhetorical weapons in preparation for retrenchment in the war against the science of climate change–the “climate wars”. <\/p>\n

I can appreciate this at a very personal level. I was somewhat involuntarily thrust into the center of the public debate over climate change at this very time, when the “Hockey Stick” temperature reconstruction<\/a> I co-authored, depicting the unprecedented nature of modern warming in at least the past millennium, developed into an icon in the debate over human-caused climate change [particularly when it was featured in the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM)<\/a> of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2001]. I soon found myself at the center of concerted attacks by those who believed, somewhat cynically (and quite illogically<\/a> from a scientific viewpoint) that they could discredit the entire case for the reality and threat of human-caused climate change, if they could simply discredit my work and, indeed, me specifically (this is to be distinguished from the good-faith scientific debate and give-and-take, that is to be expected–and indeed is necessary, for the progress of science). Indeed, I wrote a book about my experiences–and what I think I’ve learned from them–earlier this year (The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars<\/em><\/a>). <\/p>\n

I was forced to defend myself in the face of a well-organized and well-funded campaign by agenda driven front groups, politicians, and policy advocates to discredit me. And I had to learn the tools of self-defense–I had to acquire the sorts of ‘language intelligence’ tools that Romm describes–through a trial-by-fire of sorts. It is my hope that other younger scientists coming into this field, who too may eventually find themselves subject to politically-motivated attacks on their work, will read Romm’s book (and perhaps mine too) and learn these lessons early in their career, so that they don’t find themselves ambushed with little or no defense, down the road. So, at the (very low, in fact) risk of repeating myself once too many times, I will say it again: you really do need to read Joe Romm’s book<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<\/div> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any book that manages to link together the lessons of the Bible, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, and Lady Gaga (not to mention Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Seinfeld), can’t be all bad. With Joe Romm’s new book Language Intelligence, it is, in fact, ALL good. There are lessons galore for the scientists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,28],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-communicating-climate","7":"category-reviews","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12730"}],"version-history":[{"count":68,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12819,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12730\/revisions\/12819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimate.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}