[BITList] Doublespeak

[John Feltham]

 From another List.

I am but the messenger......

ooroo


Below is an essay from today's English newspaper "The Guardian", about  
how
in recent years the US Government (both branches of it, actually) has  
abused
the English language.  In fairness I must point out that The Guardian  
is a
left-of-centre newspaper.  Although I don't want to start a political
conflict with the US conservatives on this List, it's worth a moment's
reading to see how corrupted language can become in a time of high  
tensions.
I have always thought it "1984"-style Doublespeak to have the Minister  
of
Defence (UK) and the Secretary of Defense (US) fighting a non- 
defensive war
in Iraq.  Our List's Conservatives and liberals should be in agreement  
on
how deplorable the corruption of English is.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Growing up and then attending college in America's deep south, I was  
taught
that when it came to the English language liberals were like Humpty  
Dumpty.
What with their "deconstruction" and "post-modernism" and "relativism"  
those
leftists - linguistic anarchists! literary terrorists! - could make a  
word
mean "just what I choose it to mean".

Meanwhile, conservatives were the mature and staid and serious  
"defenders"
of "the canon" and "the great books" and "the classics". They believed  
that
words had certain fixed, even sacrosanct, meanings that were rooted in
religion, tradition and western mores.

Then I graduated and encountered the Bush administration.

Conservative in garb, southern in style, jingoistic in jargon, it was  
Osama
bin Laden to English. All of a sudden I saw not just an absolute  
disregard
for language but a complete subversion of it. Everyone from GW Bush  
down to
his staff and political appointments traduced our lingua franca and  
left me
feeling utterly disoriented.

It is worth considering some of the crimes against English that Bush
conservatism wrought.

There was, for starters, the term "compassionate conservatism". It  
should
have immediately rung a warning bell. Here was a leader whose mantra  
was an
insult to his own philosophy. Hint: if you need to put "compassionate"
before "conservatism", you are signalling that regular conservatism is
brutal or indifferent. (Incidentally, some Muslims object to the use  
of the
term "moderate Muslim", because it wrongly implies that the average  
Muslim
is an extremist).

Putting aside the seven minutes of silence that occurred on one of the  
most
tragic days in American history - to what can those be attributed  
except a
lack of coherent words? - one ends up in the arena of law enforcement,  
where
the Bush administration turned English into a laughing stock.

The most serious error was the term "war on terror." On September 18  
2001,
the Rand Corporation requested the government not to refer to our  
response
as a war, as it would confirm the narrative that al-Qaida wanted to
establish. And how can one wage war upon a feeling? A war on terror is  
as
farcical as a war on pain or a jihad on arousal. "War on terrorism" is  
not a
whole lot better because a) it doesn't have the requisite ring and b)  
most
of what we've done in response to al-Qaeda constitutes collaborative  
police
action and doesn't fit the traditional definition of war. The unsexy,  
but
correct, term should have have been "counter-terrorism".

The terror errors accumulated. Faced by a group of killers who fancied
themselves modern-day Saladins and sought revenge for the occupation of
Jerusalem, President Bush went ahead and called his response, yes, a
crusade.

This was followed by the foolishly named "Operation Infinite Justice"  
- a
theological phrase invoking God - which was the first title given to the
operation in Afghanistan. It was eventually renamed "Operation Enduring
Freedom" when someone realised that Muslims believed in God as well. By
then, however, the damage had been done.

Then, as the United States tried to "win the battle for the hearts and
minds" of Muslims, we gave our operations such conciliatory names as
"Operation Hammer" and "Operation Mountain Fury".

Soon would follow experiments with farcical terms such as  
"Islamofascism"
(thankfully rejected by Centcom's General Abizaid) and overly inclusive
terms like "Wahhabism" (if the war was against Wahhabis, why were  
Saudi and
Kuwaiti officials welcome in the United States?). It was only this  
year that
the state department sent a memo around saying it was probably not a  
good
idea to use these terms.

Finally, and most obtuse, was the use of the term "extraordinary  
rendition".
Why couldn't the administration follow the basic etiquette of Strunk and
White's Element of Style and call an action what it was: torture? Or
"overseas torture".

Inevitably this disregard for the relationship between a word and its
meaning trickled down into the blogosphere, where the war on terror  
became a
"clash of civilisations" or just the "west versus Islam". Meanwhile, the
terms "jihadism" and "Islamism" became conflated, even though the  
former is
extra-legal and permits violent killing and the latter is legal and
non-violent activism in the service of illiberal policies (in fact the  
US
has allies among various Islamist parties).

Even acts of non-political stupidity by individual Muslims - genital
mutilation or fatwas about the permissibility of drinking breast milk or
honour killings - became part and parcel of this new war on Islam that  
we
were fighting. An honour killing is a reprehensible act, like other  
domestic
crimes such as marital rape or incest, but it doesn't have much to do  
with
terrorism. Yet to many a blogger political violence and moral  
turpitude were
both captured under one overarching umbrella: Islam. Only someone with
complete disregard for language could assert such a thing. Then again,  
the
doyen of language over the last eight years was George Bush.

The English language deteriorated further with the Iraq war. The Bush
administration called it the "war in Iraq" when in fact, being an  
invasion,
it was a war on Iraq, or against Iraq. Nor was it a "liberation",  
because
that would have meant that it was welcome; nor could it be a  
"humanitarian
intervention" because the invasion exponentially increased the number of
dead Iraqis and refugees; nor could it be "democracy promotion"  
because the
constitution that was put in place made women second-class citizens.

Donald Rumsfeld then contributed with his "unknown unknowns" (I can
appreciate this one), while Condoleezza Rice chimed in with her "new  
Middle
East " - which was amusing because, in fact, things weren't any  
different
before or after the declaration. And then there was Bush speech writer  
David
Frum with his "axis of evil", which is a bit like saying "tripod of  
light."

Now, America has elected a president who, some conservatives  
recognise, is
good with language. (Although I vaguely remember that in one speech  
Sarah
Palin attacked Obama for having written books that sold well). Will this
mean that that eight-year war on the English language will come to an  
end?
Will this mean that conservatives will forswear the Humpty Dumpty view  
of
English and go back to speaking plainly and clearly (to spite Obama if
nothing else)?

Given that the man conservatives authorised to represent them in this
election spent three decades in DC and then called himself a  
"maverick" and
the vice-presidential candidate went "rogue" against her own campaign, I
think it's safe to say that conservatives and the English language are  
at
significant loggerheads. They should consider going back and reading the
classics.