With all the controversy about the building which will have Islamic prayers on Park Place in New York City (yes, that was very carefully worded), I thought it very pertinent that I pass along this this article from The Huffington Post by Matt Sledge. In it he discusses the use of the term “Ground Zero Mosque” and how it is being used to draw people into a certain way of thinking. An interesting read, to say the least.
(Audio courtesy of Deadwood.)
I’ve long been fascinated by the art of the apology, or in some instances, the spectacular lack thereof. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, Texas Republican Congressperson Joe Barton notably apologized to the corporate heads of BP in the wake of White House pressure to secure from the company a $20 billion payback fund. Soon thereafter, he retracted that apology… then later retracted his retraction… and then I got bored following the story, so who even knows the apology’s status as of this writing? The malum discordiae for such tone-deaf flip floppery? According to Steven Andrew’s Examiner article “How to Use Twitter to Make Friends and Influence People,” it had an awful lot to do with Twitter*:
Literally before the GOP leadership and the conservative media fully realized what Barton had said, much less had time to think about the consequences, Barton’s comments and the GOBP idea had already ripped through twitter like wildfire and the narrative was set. The Republican establishment, their clumsy Fox News and talk radio dinosaurs rendered useless, panicked and ran for the exits.
Now that the traditional rightwing echo chamber has been knocked back on its heels by this unanticipated blast of disruptive feedback, it’ll be interesting to see how the “tweet factor” is accounted for in the future… And if Barton will eventually retract the retraction of the retraction.
* And maybe a little of this, too.
Our choice of words helps facilitate certain thoughts and empowers particular logics, while disciplining others. This is a foundational principle of rhetorical studies and probably nothing new to many of this blog’s readers.
Every once and awhile, though, I realize just how high the stakes really are.
The video below was found at WikiLeaks, “a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents” (wikipedia entry). It is a classified US military video that shows the shooting of a dozen people in a suburb of Baghdad. Among the victims were two Reuters news staff. Two children are also involved.
Please take caution: this is raw footage, complete with the Army’s audio, of people being shot.
I deliberated on alternatives for “being shot” for quite some time. Perhaps–”this is raw footage of people being murdered.” Or “slayed.” Or “wrongly identified and accidentally fired upon.”
Slaughtered? Invalidated? Massacred? Killed? Rendered collateral damage?
Or, perhaps: engaged.
In the video you hear the military personnel saying, “We just engaged all eight individuals.”
It’s important to note that the video’s opening frame is a quote by Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”:
[Political language is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Elsewhere in that essay Orwell writes, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” I think the assumed interpretation of this is meant to indicate the government’s defense to the public. This language is then, of course, picked up by the body politic, replicated by supporters to other members of the public. This language becomes the banal standard, the terms we use–whether we’re for, against, or indifferent–to communicate.
But I wonder if we might think about how we use smokescreen language like this on ourselves, to psychologically shield ourselves from what we know is “indefensible,” which could be translated here as “unconscionable.”
So when the soldier in this video says, “I’m just trying to find targets again,” we could say it’s because it’s what allows him “to do his job” (another phrase of justification, used to pass accountability to another realm). Can you imagine it rephrased?
“I’m just trying to find a breathing body that has hopes and dreams like you and I to send a piece of metal through so that his blood will mix with the sand.”
This isn’t a piece about placing praise or blame on soldiers. This isn’t the forum for such a critique; and having known several veterans of Iraq, I would never hastily condemn the individual without knowing more. (For instance, what if the person doing the shooting ultimately found such an act reprehensible and leaked the video himself in a courageous attempt to right a wrong?)
This is a forum about language and its consequences.
Military speak is an extreme example of language that shields its users from discussing the indefensible. It’s easy for us to assume that we are separate from those who must use linguistic mirrors to either do what they’re told or justify daily action. But if you find this use of language chilling in its brutal efficacy, perhaps you’re willing to try something…
Let’s search for all those terms that displace our own accountability. Let’s identify them, interrogate them, and reframe them for the better. And let’s do it in a public forum.
Habitat loss and endangered species perform the same function that collateral damage and enhanced interrogation techniques do. They are terms that permit–indeed facilitate–thinking that directs us away from a frame of accountability.
For those that think it’s a stretch to align environmental atrocity with the atrocity in the video below, you might first question how the two aggressions, rationale and even people behind those acts are similar. The connections are staggering.
And so I’m calling on all rhetoricians, language-lovers, and wordsmiths to raise the stakes a bit, and using the emotion generated by the video below, to take ownership of language in such a way that it becomes infused with accountability and agency.
I just opened a letter from one of my credit card companies and was immediately put on guard: something just seemed different.
Unlike many of my friends (but perhaps not those who consider themselves professional rhetoricians) I’m in the habit of actually reading credit card policy updates and other fine-print heavy documents, like contracts, nutritional notes–you know–”enlarged to show texture”-type stuff. It certainly isn’t born out of some rigid sense of responsibility; it’s much more of a perverse delight in how much communication is swept under the proverbial rug. (If you’d like to catch this bug, I suggest you spend sometime at Mouse Print, a site dedicated to exposing the fine-strings-attached in 8 pt. font.)
So when I read through this letter I was tickled (not sure if that’s the right word) to find out that part of its purpose was about, yep, fine print.
One of the requirements included in the “Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act,” which was signed into law by President Obama on May 22, 2009, is a redesigning of billing statements.
One of the main changes? Font size. After years of years the fine print, this one looked almost childish with it massive, clumsy 12-pt font!
Although it’s not the language that is used in the legislation, the Obama administration has been promoting a rhetoric of “Plain Language in Plain Site.”
Credit card contract terms will be disclosed in language that consumers can see and understand so they can avoid unnecessary costs and manage their finances … These disclosures will help consumers make informed choices about using the right financial products and managing their own financial needs.
Something like this is very easy to make fun of when touted as “real reform,” but I’m in a generous mood and right now I’m of the persuasion that this is a step in the right direction. For instance, who is really going to take the time to read through something like this and connect the dots:
Don’t those call-out boxes, bolded terms, and line-breaks just naturally guide your eye?! They basically interpret the information for you! Unless you’re a fine-print-freak (like moi), this statement probably goes right in the recycling bin. (Which is probably why people are shocked to discovered their rates get jacked every year without them really being aware.)
Right now my class and I are finishing up a project on data visualization, so I’m thinking about how much our credit/debt-lifestyles would change with some powerful graphs that displayed the same information in compelling ways. For example, what if you were given a graph that compared your payment to the amount of time it would take for you to get out of debt? Take data like this …
… and render it visually persuasive? What if we had info-graphic specialists that worked in conjunction with consumer protection agencies to present this information in such a way that actually made people cognizant of where their money was going?
Perhaps something like this, but even better?
(Dennis Campbell: Center for Plain Language Symposium)
What if we started to radically reimagine the use of info-graphics and data visualization to improve daily practice toward something more sane and sustainable?
timeline of when oil actually went into mainstream production for automobiles along side a graph that showed how much is left in the earth? Maybe include how long it took to actually make the s**t?And what if we didn’t wait for anyone else to start doing this? What if we took it upon ourselves to inform others through creative measures? What if we bettered our communities through something as simple as a compelling graphic? What if we worked together to do it?
Oh, my goodness. You must check out this site: http://fantasyscotus.net/
It’s Supreme Court Fantasy League–you know, kinda like fantasy football, but with the supreme court. My favorite thing on that site, would have to be on the rules page. And I quote:
NB. Because this is the inaugural season of FantasySCOTUS.net, the rules may be subject to change. But as avid followers of the Supreme Court, you should have no problem with rules that are modified frequently.
Ha. It makes me chuckle. It also encourages me that some people care so much about the Supreme Court that they’d make a game out of it. I wonder if students would get into this. It says it’s free for students and teachers. I’m sure it would serve as a good exercise for someone.
via Blogora
Okay, so how many of you out there have seen this footage by New Left Media at a Sarah Palin book signing?
This was filmed November 20th, 2009 at a Borders down the street from me. For the record, I don’t recall seeing this long line of people. Perhaps I just wasn’t out and about in that area that day. It is likely.
Anywho, I want to talk about this video, specifically, because this kind of representation makes me nervous. Or uncomfortable. I see the humor in it. I see the idea that these particular interviewees don’t appear to give insightful answers about the questions they are asked when they are supposed to be very strong supporters of this person and these issues. Yes, irony. Wonderful. If it were on Jon Stewart, I’d laugh. But, it’s not.
My issue is that it comes from New Left Media, which is not about comedy. They are about supporting issues that are traditionally liberal and my uncomfortableness is not with the organization specifically; it’s that this video uses techniques that are so polarizing. The anti-Palins will point, laugh, and say that was their point all along. Pro-Palins will say that the video is edited to cater to the anti-Palins and doesn’t reflect a true Palin audience, even though New Left Media adamantly denies “cherry picking.” They went on to say:
As for accusations of cherry picking, which are commonly thrown at interview-based videos, it simply isn’t what we did. We interviewed only a few more people than ended up in the video, not hundreds, and what was cut was done for time purposes. The people were selected at random–some offered to be interviewed–and we were only there for 90 mins (it gets dark early and fast in Ohio right now). What didn’t make it into the video was just more footage of people talking about taxes/spending, drilling, and abortion, and we constructed blocks in the piece to represent those issues. Of course the piece was edited to be entertaining (this is YouTube, after all, where the currency is cat videos) but we don’t believe we misrepresented the attitudes of the people at that signing in any way.
I question the positive impact that this video has. Yes, it has had an effect of some kind–it has more than a million views and more than twenty-one thousand comments, but reading those comments is painful. It’s a major flame war. This kind of framing doesn’t foster dialogue or conversation where opposing groups can speak thoughtfully about a subject. It degrades and mocks one group, which automatically puts them on the defense.
I will say this, the video is clever. It is, but I wonder how the video might have changed if the interviewer asked specific questions about specific policies. I wonder if there might have been more detailed answers or at least made the interviewee start thinking about her specific policies. Of course, don’t me wrong, there are some just plain atrocious answers in there (seriously, Russia across the street?), but by marking the interviewees as idiotic without responding to their actual concerns, then no real progress is made. No one feels heard or understood, which does not make them more willing to concede to the other person’s point.
Perhaps, I’m just an idealist. Or maybe I’m a bit too tender-hearted, but I believe that real, intelligent, thoughtful conversations are possible and that we all can disagree with compassion. That’s part of what Harlot‘s about. That’s part of what I want to support.
My ideas on this aren’t solidified yet (because I also understand that witty commentary–no matter how offensive–also has its place) and I doubt that I’ll ever have an absolutely concrete stance, but I do wish that I’d have the opportunity to see whether a more compassionate and empathetic conversation would have a positive impact. At the moment, there just aren’t many of those types conversations happening.
My Thanksgiving weekend several weeks ago took an interesting turn when I read in the newspaper that one of America’s oldest Protestant church apologized to Native Americans–for massacring and displacing them:
We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes, and great love for this land…With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.
At first I was simply intrigued by the skillful circumvention of that devilishly accurate term: genocide. But then I found myself enthralled by the questions this curious genre raises: Under what circumstances can one apologize for actions done by others? Especially those done several hundred years ago? What are the differences between an apology from a collective and one from an individual? What are the consequences of an apology that deals with crimes against humanity? And among all the atrocious acts that have been committed/commissioned by governments, how do you choose which ones get an official apology?
While this particular instance hit me hard (perhaps because Thanksgiving is such a perversely appropriate time to contemplate apologies), I must confess that I had already been thinking about the genre because of all the large-scale, national apologies we saw in 2009:
That last bill will probably die, however, because its language has managed to sneak in elsewhere. Just last week the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Buried in the billions of dollars of spending on new weapons and other items in the 2010 defense appropriations bill is a little-noticed expression of regret over how the U.S. had in the past used its power. The bill contains an ‘apology to Native Peoples of the United States.’” How apropos. In our defense budget documentation is the sentence, “the United States, acting through Congress…recognizes that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes.” **
(Now, I don’t think anyone with a shred of integrity can suggest that the “policies” of the government were simply “ill-conceived,” but that rant is for another day.)
So what’s being communicated here? What is the government trying to persuade us of? What’s being accomplished with this quickly developing genre? And what’s the best way to leverage these apologies for more (significant, noble) change? For fear of a long tirade I’ll hold my breath on this until I hear some of you chime in, but these are important questions to ask, I think, especially because the “official apology” is only going to increase, and because it is a conspicuous shift in US policy.
I remember, for example, being 11 years old and hearing Bush Sr. repeatedly claim that he will never apologize for America.
This stance was actually a key component in how Bush constructed a staunchly American ethos when running for President:
This post is getting a tad big, so I’m going to continue it later this week; it’s simply too intriguing of a topic to stop here.
My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
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** If you’re like me, you’re probably stewing on whether or not an apology like this could be used in the legal system against the United States. After all, if the government acknowledges broken treaties (33% of the landmass is still held illegally, actually, because many broken treaties never had their legal-standing fully dissolved post-population removal) and apologizes for this, it could have massive legal consequences. But don’t worry–they thought about that ahead of time. Included in the document is some fine print: “[This apology] isn’t intended to support any lawsuit claims against the government.”
Hmm, looks like the US learned something from their official apology to Hawaiians for invading the country and exploiting its people and resources. Hawaii’s Supreme Court is using the apology as evidence for ceding 1.2 million acres of land away from US control.
This is the first time, from what I can gather, that an apology is being used as legal evidence. The consequences of this case could be huge–and the US knows that. Here’s a snippet from the Wall Street Journal article that’s linked above:
Upholding the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling could discourage Congress from making similar apologies for other historic wrongs, the Justice Department warned, adding that the Apology Resolution was only symbolic.
A year after the Apology Resolution, the [Office of Hawaiian Affairs] filed suit..leading to the high-court case. “The Western concept of land ownership was very foreign to Hawaiians,” says Hawaiian Affairs Administrator Clyde Namuo. In traditional culture, “property is not a commodity that is bought and sold but it is used to benefit people who live and reside on the land.”
There’s a fascinating piece in the NY Times today — “Point, Shoot, Retouch and Label?” by Steven Erlanger –about French politician Valerie Boyer’s draft of a law requiring advertisements to carry a label if they contain images that have been digitally retouched. This is not a new discussion; publishing associations in the UK and elsewhere have talked about voluntary reform. Check out the consistently smart coverage in Jezebel. But it may be the first to push a law.
The article focuses on the issue of women’s body images and the dangers of falsified ideals, documenting various approaches to this debate, from hopes that “such a label might sensitize people to the fakery involved in most of the advertising images with which they’re bludgeoned” to the threat that “such a law would destroy photographic art.”
In this vein, a fashion photographer is quoted pointing out that all photography is a representation of reality through a lens that excludes as well as captures. Very smart and valid… but is this the generally accepted view that fashion magazine readers share? Based on a sample of my self, friends, students, sister, cousins…. No. However naively, most women still “buy” these false images.
An editor at Marie Claire declares the labels unnecessary because “Our readers are not idiots … Of course they’re all retouched.” You’ve got to almost admire her bravado, and the move to convince her readers with a magazine that so clearly respects their intelligence… I guess I’m an idiot, then, since despite my rhetorical training, I’d still love to be informed.
Check out Marie Claire’s edited editors:
Photoshop Disasters: Marie Claire
At least, in the meantime, we have such wonderful sources as Jezebel and Photoshop Disasters and Photoshop of Horrors, and of course fun on YouTube:
I’m still not used to seeing Ralph Nader’s name in my inbox. Sure, I signed up for his listserv, but that has yet to stop me from thinking that Ralph has searched me out personally because he knows how much I enjoy a rant, especially those that mercilessly attack greed and corruption. Of course, Ralph and I don’t agree on everything, but his essays are eminently reasonable and meticulously researched.
Last week, however, I almost wrote Ralph back, letting him know how much one of his emails hurt my head and heart. He succumbed to cliché and alliteration (a poisonous combo, for sure) by titling an essay, “Between the Rhetoric and the Reality.” He didn’t explicitly extrapolate on the shaky binary, thankfully, but such a juxtaposition is sure to raise hairs on most rhetoricians. Wayne Booth started collecting headlines like this years ago (perhaps to mollify his irritation) and shares a few in the preface to The Rhetoric of Rhetoric:
“Impoverished students deserve solutions, not rhetoric.”
“[What I've just said] is not rhetoric or metaphor. It’s only truth.”
“President Bush’s speech was long on rhetoric and short on substance.”
We’ve all seen the likes of these lines, so I’ll not needlessly deride them with a long response on how rhetoric is most productively viewed as epistemic (it simultaneously describes, discovers, and creates knowledge) or how language fundamentally shapes our perceptions of reality. Instead, I’m here to let you know that Ralph redeemed himself yesterday (for the most part*) with an email titled, “Words Matter.”
He begins by ridiculing the journalists who uncritically adopt words that are finely calibrated to affect the way we think about an issue or concept. His examples are rather thought-provoking, so I thought I would share:
Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S.,
Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn’t the media know that the correct word is “prisoners,” regardless of what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld disseminated?
The raging debate and controversy over health insurance and the $2.5 trillion spent this year on health care involves consumers and “providers.” I always thought “providers” were persons taking care of their families or engaging in charitable service. Somehow, the dictionary definition does not fit the frequently avaricious profiles of Aetna, United Healthcare, Pfizer and Merck.
“Privatization” and the “private sector” are widespread euphemisms that the press falls for daily. Moving government owned assets or functions into corporate hands, as with Blackwater, Halliburton, and the conglomerates now controlling public highways, prisons, and drinking water systems is “corporatization,” not the soft imagery of going “private” or into the “private sector.” It is the corporate sector!
“Free trade” is a widely used euphemism. It is corporate managed trade as evidenced in hundreds of pages of rules favoring corporations in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. “Free trade” lowers barriers between countries so that cartels, unjustified patent monopolies, counterfeiting, contraband, and other harmful practices and products can move around the world unhindered.
* This redemption is only partial, I’m afraid. Despite the correct articulation that “words matter,” Ralph’s proposed solution is to use “words that are accurate and [can be taken at] face value.” He calls for “straight talk” and “semantic discipline.” Such an appeal reflects his earlier rhetoric/reality split by suggesting that we “cut the rhetoric” and get down to the “real” stuff. His framing suggests that there are right words and wrong words, with the right words being more ideologically or politically neutral. Demanding that we return to the dictionary as a source of authority and clarity is about as persuasive as Dukakis in a tank. So here’s the deal, Ralph: I promise to vote for you when you run in 2012 (or 2016, since you’ll probably be there, too) if you read the following works and give this troubled binary some serious reconsideration:
-) “Rhetorical Perspectivism” in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
From the Governator:
We in California have made a big move forward in that area because the people of California have approved $42 billion of infrastructure … I think that was a really big, big step forward
and I think that the federal government has to do obviously the same thing.
The important thing is that we look at how do we get the people enthusiastic about the subject? Because the word infrastructure means nothing to the majority of people of America. We have to come up with a sexier word than infrastructure. So the key thing is that you have to go out and promote and market this the right way like with everything in policy.
[In California] we went out and didn’t talk about infrastructure but we talked about are you angry about getting stuck in traffic every day, and you cannot spend enough time with your family and with your children? That really aroused anger in most of the people and we said vote yes on those propositions.
“Sexier,” of course, is synonymous here with “persuasive.” (And you wondered why we named the journal Harlot of the Arts.) To be persuasive is to be sexually appealing and alluring on a visceral level. A successful rhetor will no doubt get pleasure out of, um, skillful application. But also look at how quickly he switches frames: “you have to go out and promote and market this the right way.” The economic rhetoric here fits easily with, “sex sells.”
Perhaps we’ll get Arnold to write a piece for Harlot . . .
Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion
2008
