"Whole Language" proponents are lacking when it comes to science, but they excel when it comes to educationese. The very term, "whole language" has better connotations than "phonics." Similarly with "balanced literacy" and "systematic synthetic phonics." Similarly with the point of this comment: "real books" and "decodable books."
What WL folks call "real books" are anything but that. They are carefully structured to promote anything but "real reading." They do so by focusing a child's attention on illustrations that provide the cues in text that repeats it's phrasing so that children can be prompted with the phrase and then "read" a "page" or several "pages." Some kids see through this artificiality and intuit the Code, but many kids--the conscientious ones who trust everything the teacher tells them--are thrown off by the deplorable instruction.
"Real Books" are deplorable instructional books.
All books are "real" and all books are "decodable." But you have to know how to handle the Alphabetic Code to be able to read any book. "Real instructional books" serve that professional purpose. They give students practice in real reading as they are being taught how to handle an increasingly large set of grapheme/phoneme correspondences.
I recognize that the terms "Alphabetic Code" and "grapheme/phoneme correspondences" are unfamiliar to most people. But if people say, "WTF are you saying," that's the opportunity for conveying the science and history involved. If they insist on sticking with "Deplorable Instructional Books" over "Real Instructional Books" they will have difficulty defending their choice.