- DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- News that
the American Dialect Society named "weapons of mass destruction"
as its "word of the year" came not a moment too soon.
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- Like many others, I've spent the year wincing at that
phrase (not a word, ADS), which seemed to pop up like a rabbit in heat
as the country spiraled deeper and deeper into George W. Bush's mad obsession
with Iraq. But the ADS claims it's been around for 50 years. Why am I not
surprised?
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- Writing in 1946, George Orwell perfectly described this
kind of language: "Political language... is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity
to pure wind."
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- We should all beware when language is corrupted, because
it cheapens both our lives and our culture. Yet catchwords, euphemisms,
disinformation, propaganda, and the hijacking of perfectly fine words for
nefarious purposes are far too common today.
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- Take the overly-abused "healing," like this
ridiculous ad in The New York Times: "Meet Kazuko, the high priestess
of crystal jewelry and preview her... healing sculpture." While jewelry
can certainly affect our emotions, it's not exactly penicillin, is it?
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- Clichés are can be annoying, like this year's
"ratchet up," but other words can stifle our thinking, like "closure"
which is used for everything from a death in the family to a scratch in
the family car, or "issues" and "challenges," which
hide the fact that you have "problems." Why say "pre-owned"
or "vintage" when you mean used? Why say "supersized"
or "ultrapremium?" Aren't "the largest" and "the
best" good enough?
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- The most dangerous language, however - Orwell's purest
wind - comes from the Bush White House.
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- What does "weapons of mass destruction" actually
mean? We've seen perfectly innocent jet planes turned into weapons of mass
destruction. An Uzi fits that description. So does a bomb - any bomb, even
one strapped to the waist of a deluded terrorist. So does a nuclear weapon.
So does an anthrax spore. How about a machete? A contributor to "The
2003 List of Banished Words" (from Lake Superior State University)
writes, "A few thousand machetes in the hands of an army in Africa
can lead to mass genocide."
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- Does the meaning depend on how many people actually die?
How many people does it take to make a mass? Sounds like a light-bulb joke.
A sniper in Washington is a mass murderer. So is a British doctor who kills
30 elderly patients. And how do we bridge the numbers gap between them
and Adolph Hitler, or the U.S. in Hiroshima, or 9-11?
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- What makes matters worse is that people are now using
shorthand: WMD. The acronym bleeds the term of any possible relationship
to human life; it makes, as Orwell said, murder respectable.
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- To my ear, "Department of Homeland Security"
comes straight from Orwell by way of Soviet Russia. Homeland? You mean
America? Who else's land would we be making secure? This land IS our land.
How about a Department of Security? Why haven't we had one before? Has
the Defense Department failed?
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- Bush's "regime change" was voted "most
euphemistic" by the ADS, but its toxic meaning was quickly neutered
when everyone else got into the act. "Regime change in America"
was my favorite.
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- "Evildoers" is a hideous word. It's not only
awkward but self-righteous. It also reduces the complexity of the world
to meaningless generalizations. We already have enough serviceable words:
bad guys; criminals; outlaws; terrorists; enemies.
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- James Carroll in The Boston Globe correctly identified
the current linguistic muddle as "a crisis of language."
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- "The United States is a splintered, lost country
where words have been emptied of meaning," Carroll said. "That
is a symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome, our national malady. We
have been unable to give expression to terrible experiences. Our worst
fears remain subliminal, but we recognize them in each other's eyes."
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- Carroll believes that Bush, "proudly inarticulate,
has no real understanding of the relationship between words and acts, between
rhetoric and intention."
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- The North Korean situation is a perfect example. Bush
rattled off a bunch of countries in his "Axis of Evil" speech
to make the world seem even more threatening to Americans than it really
is. But he was oblivious to the fact that there are real people living
in these countries, and that they might take the words of the President
of the United States very seriously.
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- We can make fun of Bush's linguistic failures, but we
should be wary, says Mark Crispin Miller, author of "The Bush Dyslexicon:
Observations on a National Disorder." In an interview with The Toronto
Star, he said that Bush is "a sociopathic personality" who is
only inarticulate when he's trying to appear warm and friendly.
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- "He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's
speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking
about revenge," Miller said. "When he struts and thumps his chest,
his syntax and grammar are fine. It's only when he leaps into the wild
blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these
hilarious mistakes."
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- Remember when Bush said, "I know how hard it is
to put food on your family"? According to Miller, Bush stumbles because
he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table. He is a detached
and wealthy man who is unable to identify with the people he is supposed
to lead. And if he can't identify with ordinary Americans, what chance
is there that he can identify with oppressed Iraqis or starving North Koreans?
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- "He's a very angry guy, a hostile guy," Miller
said. "He's much like Nixon ... I call him the feel-bad president,
because he's all about punishment and death."
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- Carroll takes this idea one step further. "As a
candidate, Bush openly displayed his willful illiteracy," he said.
"At a loss for words, and proud of it. Many voters were charmed. Others
were appalled. Few understood, however, that this abdication of leadership
by the intelligent use of language would be dangerous to democracy at home,
a grievous threat to peace abroad."
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- Joyce Marcel is a free-lance journalist who writes about
culture, politics, economics and travel.
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- Copyright 2003 <mailto:editor@american-reporter.com>Joe
Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.
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- http://www.american-reporter.com/2024/25.html
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