A Few Good Words

By Christina Waters, AlterNet. Posted October 27, 2004.

"At this moment, peace, that word so glibly appropriated by all sides, feels soiled, tired, and beaten-up."

So says artist Sushma Joshi, summing up the reaction of many Americans battered by escalating political rhetoric. "Security," writes journalist Mary Louise Pratt, "is one of those words, like 'celibacy' or 'short' that invokes its opposite. As soon as you mention security, you suggest there's a danger, or a potential danger. Otherwise the subject wouldn't be coming up. So talking about security is one of the most effective ways to cause fear."

More and more words have acquired strange, new inflections. "Imagine you are a U.S. state governor or corporate CEO who wants to slash spending, fire employees, close branches or plants, and avoid pension obligations. How can you put it across; how can you minimize the 'turbulence'; how can you sugarcoat this bitter pill?" asks political scientist James Scott. "It will help if you call it 'streamlining.'"

Consider the phrase "shock and awe," a recent military appropriation of terms describing altered states of consciousness. "Twist and Shout." "Shuck and Jive." Even the rhythm of the phrase plays with emotionally charged memories and associations. "Shoot to Kill." Just in time for the upcoming election, a new book, "Shock and Awe: War on Words" reappropriates that phrase – and many more, providing a bracing antidote to prevailing polit-speak. The first publication from the über-alternative New Pacific Press, "Shock and Awe" is the brainchild of University of California, Santa Cruz's Institute for Advanced Feminist Research. Inquiring minds numbed by the voodoo of media propaganda will find refreshment in this slender text, composed of essays, photographs and poems. As history is busily rewritten by battalions of script-writers and strategists, the contributors to "Shock and Awe" are passionate about reclaiming a few good words.

The motivation for this compilation of "the political trajectory of words" sprang from a seminar on Feminisms and Global War. "It was a call to take back language that had been so debased in the aftermath of 9/11," explains IAFR Director Helene Moglen. Moglen, who also holds a Presidential Chair in Literature at UCSC, was amazed at the vigorous response from over 75 contributors. While acknowledging the leftist perspective of "Shock and Awe," Moglen insists that "the meanings of words are dependent on who has the power, and the right definitely has had the power lately." Co-editor Jennifer Gonzalez, a visual historian at UCSC, recalls the book's inception. "We had something of the Orwellian concern that our mass media and even political discourse was becoming an intolerable form of "newspeak."

For Moglen et al., the elasticity of language has become shaped and frozen by those in control – hence the "war on words" of the book's subtitle. Organized as meditations upon single words or phrases, the book offers a diversity of styles. Some, like the illumination of "the Disappeared" by Angela Davis, lace taut historical lessons with controlled anger. Others – the opening poem by L.R. Berger, for example – resonate with equal helpings of humor and defiance. Co-editor Anna Tsing helpfully includes the passage from "Alice in Wonderland" which has immortalized the very issue of words and their ownership. "When I use a word," says the reigning Humpty Dumpty, "it means just what I choose it to mean." To wit, George W. Bush's use of the expression, "evil-doer."

The political right, through such wordcraft as "partial birth abortion," managed not only to spin the political platter their way, but in the process generated slogans with the sort of instant sex appeal adored by the media. Soon the airways were clogged with journalists repeating these sound bites and unwittingly reinforcing the perspective of the dominant political party. UC Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff is another academic exercised by the implicit agenda embedded in public discourse. The linguistic "frame," as Lakoff calls a given metaphor of choice, gives potent spin to the conversation. Yet most people rarely look past the debate in question to notice that the delivery system, in this case the rhetoric, is what actually twists, skews, and spins the point in a particular direction. If words are the arrow, then the linguistic metaphor – the frame – is the bow. Gonzalez agrees that viewed in stride with Lakoff's work, "Shock and Awe" might be thought of "as a new framing device which serves to reclaim meanings for words that had been usurped by the mass media and the Bush administration."

Christina Waters, Ph.D., is a lecturer in philosophy at UCSC and writes about social issues, food, wine, art and the environment for the alternative press.

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