I think these language questions show us how difficult and puzzling the
situation is.
When a violent act is committed and you try to figure out who did it, try to
assemble evidence, and try to catch the people, then that is the realm of
crime and law. But here catching and punishing a few people will clearly
not solve the problem for the future.
When a violent act is committed and you asssemble armed forces and head
toward another country and fight that country until they surrender, that is
the realm of war. But that doesn't fit here either because there is no
country and the notion that an enemy government here could formally
"surrender" doesn't make sense.
When you go to another part of the world and try to convert people to your
way of believing and punish them if they don't convert, that, at least in a
general way, is a crusade. But that concept doesn't fit either, in part
because I don't think we even want to convert the mid-east; we just want
terrorists to stop being terrorists.
I think these terms fail to work partly because the conflict is larger than
just America vs. terrorists. The best description I have read about is in
Benjamin Barber's book a few years ago, "Jihad vs. McWorld." The growing
conflict between traditional, religious, local cultures with a violent
potential to them on the one hand, and modern international corporatism,
epitomized by but not limited to America. We don't have the term for
methodically violent conflict between these two aspects of global culture.
Brock Haussamen
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Yates [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 8:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Issues of language
The events of the past week provide all kinds of interesting examples of how
important it is to use the right words.
I just saw Bush in a joint interview with Chirac, President of France.
Chirac said
clearly that he would not use the word "war" to describe the conflict we are
now
in. It is interesting that Bush didn't use it either. Why might some people
avoid
the term war?
The best example of word choice is crusade. Apparently, Bush recently
talked about
the need for a "crusade" against those how carried out the events of
September 11.
Almost immediately Muslim countries in the Middle East reacted against that
formulation. If I were teaching the right course, I might want to bring up
whether
"crusade" is the appropriate word to describe the struggle we are in. What
is its
original meaning? Is the avoidance of crusade in these circumstances a kind
of
"political correctness"? Can Americans use the word crusade to describe the
campaign against terrorism?
It might be interesting to consider whether it is appropriate for the leader
of the
US to say we want Ben Ladin "dead or alive."
Of course, there are wonderful examples of speeches and interviews with
Bush,
Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Guiliani, etc. to consider. What did these people
say
about the events? Which of these people seemed to inspire the most
confidence?
Why? All these people have been saying about the same things, but some
seemed more
successful than others. What were the characteristics of the language that
was
used which seemed to inspire more confidence?
All of these are wonderful question about language which the tragic events
of the
past week raise.
Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University
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