The May 16th New York Times Public Editor column on Semantic Minefields was another reminder that words matter. The piece uses public input about terms like “assassination” versus “targeted killing”, “settlements” versus “housing” in the context of the Middle East and “man-made” versus “natural” disaster to describe the effects of Hurricane Katrina to explore the relationship between the initial word choice and all of the arguments that flow from it (I made a similar point on The Alyona Show last week).
The initial word choice determines all that follows from it – the word establishes who the good guys and the bad guys are, what (if anything) can and should be done in response, and the range of possible outcomes. If the devastation of New Orleans after Katrina was a man-made disaster, then those who “made” it happen (or allowed it to happen through weak regulations and poor construction) can be held legally and financially accountable, and future similar disasters can be prevented. If Katrina’s damage was the result of a natural disaster, then there is no blame to be placed, no remuneration to be paid, no punishment to be handed out, and no preventing the next devastating hurricane.
Some words that seem to obviously describe an action or event can have strikingly different political and legal implications, further complicating their use. Words like assassination, genocide and torture have general public and political meanings but have very specific meanings (and resultant implications) in international law. Such a distinction can make it more difficult to generate political action because of the high legal bar set by the term (think of whether or not waterboarding is torture, or what counts as genocide for example).
Another example of a word determining all that comes after it is “terrorist.” Terrorists are not like us – they hate our freedoms and capitalist system. We of course love our democratic capitalism, so those who hate it must necessarily fall outside of our value system, freeing us to treat them differently; for example we get to deny terrorists Constitutional protections. Terrorists are basically soldiers, making the logical response a military one – and thus also setting the bar for stopping terrorists as complete victory. If terrorists were international criminals the response would be different by definition; those combating terrorists would be international law enforcement, total victory would not be expected, and those captured would be have the same legal protections as jewel thieves and smugglers.
The lesson for advocates is of course to win the word. Do not accept the word assigned to the action you’re opposing, and strategically choose words that lead the argument in a direction you want it to go.
