Hope for the press?
You may have noticed that we here at Language Log have been wringing
our hands for several months about our inability to communicate
language science effectively to laypersons, especially to journalists.
On the positive and hopeful side, some really good columns are being
written by Jan
Freeman of the Boston Globe, Linda Seebach,
and Michael Erard
(independent journalist), as well as a few others. We can take this as
a sign of progess. And now comes a recent column
in the
Washington Post, by Eugene Robinson. It offers some more hope,
albeit indirectly, that linguists may be having some effect on the
world.
Robinson is critical of some of the current political lexicon. For
example, he questions the implicatures of recently used words, like
"homeland," about which he says:
...by
accident or design, (homeland) has the effect of clouding our view of
our enemies and ourselves... an infelicitous choice that makes us sound
as if we had quaint harvest rituals and a colorful national costume. It
strikes an odd note, with its vague connotations of ethnic solidarity
and ancient nationalism, and it gives off more than a whiff of us-vs.
them.
Us-them? Who would have thought?
Robinson also questions the definitions of other recently used
political coinages, such as "the war on terrorism," which he defines as
"police work," not military. He says that the use of this
expression "has come to define our era as entirely suspect"
because it redefined a law enforcement task as one suitable for
invasion, ostensibly removing the principles of habeas corpus and due
process.
He defines terrorism as "a tactic, not an enemy" and he has little good
to say about the way the government defines current expressions like "terrorist
surveillance program," "civil war," and words like "detainees," and, or
course, "torture."
Maybe we're gaining on it a little.
Posted by Roger Shuy at September 13, 2006 12:53 PM