I heard it reviewed on NPR a few years ago. It was about a conservative project to rewrite the dictionary, as it were, to come up with their own phrases and terminology for things and insist relentlessly on their general use – like “death panels,” but I remember the review from the Bush II years.
Here is a search of the NPR website for all stories about books with “dictionary” as the keyword. The one that seemed closest to what you’re looking for is this story about Safire’s Political Dictionary, although the book is not specifically conservative.
Sounds similar to the Conservative Bible Project. Any chance that’s what you’re thinking of?
No, the latter is a new thing, the book I’m thinking of dates from the W Admin. First term, I’m pretty sure.
Is it Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work”? It’s from 2006, so maybe not, but Luntz was the person who came up with the term “death tax”, and the book is about how you can use language to frame debates and influence public opinion.
I think that’s it . . . no, actually the book I remember was a liberal’s expose of Luntz et al.
George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant!”, or one of his other books (“Metaphors we Live By”, “Moral Politics”, “The Political Mind”?) Lakoff is a cognitive scientist at Berkeley who is sort of the liberal equivalent of Luntz, just not as good at it. But both Lakoff and Luntz are interested in the way that the use of language and metaphors shape political debate.