From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Mon 31 Mar 2003 - 14:45:48 GMT
Dear memetics list members,
I've been doing some considerable traveling and information gathering, much
of it centered on the effects of the US attacks of Iraq. We decided on this
list some time ago that the subject could not properly be handled here, and
one member was temporarily removed for violating the rule.
The ban, while necessary, was a shame, as it deprived the rest of the list
of a fascinating and timely focus of memetic inquiry. I for one, want to
probe this further. Do you want to do so also?
Email me if you do, and we'll construct an ad hoc list separate from our
formal memetic one. The focus will be on memetics and the US position in the
world, as manifested in the attack on Iraq, and the list will be private,
i.e. its communications will be limited to the members of the list, with no
archiving or external access.
Cheers,
Lawrence de Bivort
The Memetics Group
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Wade T. Smith
> Sent: Thu, March 27, 2003 7:59 AM
> To: Memetics Listserv
> Subject: Fwd: Jargon of war quickly crosses ideological gulf to daily
> usage
>
>
> Jargon of war quickly crosses ideological gulf to daily usage
>
> By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff, 3/27/2003
>
> http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/086/living/
> Jargon_of_war_quickly_crosses_ideological_gulf_to_daily_usuageP.shtml
>
> ''Vertical envelopment'' could be a hot new techno band or a Back Bay
> zoning scheme. In fact, it's a term used by Pentagon officials --
> masters of warspeak -- to describe the unleashing of massive air power
> on Baghdad, selectively targeting key installations, in the first phase
> of the war against Iraq.
>
> Think ''carpet bombing'' without the deep-pile connotation.
>
> Should the ''shock and awe'' campaign pave the way to ''catastrophic
> success,'' to borrow two more examples of current war lingo, then
> something besides an oxymoron worthy of Joseph Heller's ''Catch-22''
> could be realized. ''Catastrophic'' in this context means supremely
> good, and leads to ''decapitation'' (the removal of Saddam Hussein)
> followed by -- all together now, class -- ''regime change.'' Or
> ''debaathification,'' as an Iraqi dissident called it this week.
>
> Got that? If not, awe shucks. Your vocabulary is, like, so Desert Storm.
>
> ''Every war is like a family tussle, with a general construct and its
> own characteristics,'' says Anne Soukhanov, US general editor of
> Microsoft's Encarta College Dictionary and a dedicated tracker of word
> usage. ''As those characteristics change -- weapons, location, the
> generation that's fighting the war -- so does the language.''
>
> From the first Gulf War, says Soukhanov, we got Humvees and MREs
> (Meals, Ready to Eat) and ''the mother of all battles,'' which proved
> to be the mother of all-purpose phrases. ''There's an example of how
> one side, in this case Saddam Hussein, uses an expression that captures
> the imagination of the other side and becomes a font,'' Soukhanov says.
> ''Now we hear things like `the mother of all traffic jams.' ''
>
> Examples of freshly minted warspeak abound in newspaper columns, Web
> dispatches, and TV broadcasts. Terms such as ''embeds'' (reporters
> traveling with the troops), ''unilaterals'' (nonattached reporters),
> ''casevac'' (short for casualty evacuation), ''NBC assault'' (referring
> to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, not the peacock network),
> and ''target of opportunity'' have swiftly embedded themselves in the
> national lexicon, so to speak. (Dave Anderson wondered in a recent New
> York Times column which football coach might first use ''target of
> opportunity'' to describe ''how his team took advantage of a glaring
> weakness in an opponent's defense.'')
>
> Just since Saturday, the phrase ''shock and awe'' has appeared more
> than 700 times in US newspapers and magazines. ''Collateral damage,'' a
> slightly older species of war jargon referring to civilian casualties,
> has taken on new currency as coalition forces pound Baghdad and other
> cities. ''Shaping fires'' -- an effort to weaken enemy forces so they
> can be wiped out by subsequent attacks -- appears to be gaining ground
> with military officials.
>
> Sexy new acronyms and initials have become ubiquitous as well, from
> MOABs (''massive ordnance air burst,'' also ''mother of all bombs'') to
> UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle) to SSE (sensitive site exploitation)
> forces.
>
> There is even a military alphabet -- S Day, D Day, A Day, G Day --
> signifying moments in the battle, some occurring on the same day, when
> specific goals are realized by specific US commanders.
>
> This process of lexical assimilation has happened before, though not
> with the same immediacy that today's all-access, instant-analysis style
> of warfare produces.
>
> As far back as the Civil War, terms such as ''slacker'' and
> ''unconditional surrender'' moved from the language of the battlefield
> into mainstream society.
>
> World War I popularized ''bombardment,'' ''trench warfare,'' ''no man's
> land,'' and ''shell-shocked.''
>
> World War II gave us ''blitz'' (short for blitzkrieg) and
> ''firestorm,'' as in what rained down on Dresden, among many others.
>
> As warfare evolved, Americans spoke about being ''brainwashed'' (Korean
> War) by misleading statements or coping with ''the fallout'' (Cold War)
> of traumatic events such as divorce.
>
> Vietnam, the most protracted US conflict, produced an entire dictionary
> all its own: from ''quagmire'' and ''fragging'' to ''plausible
> deniability'' and ''friendly fire.''
>
> ''Jeep'' and ''snafu'' began life as battlefield acronyms. That
> ''no-fly zone'' once enforced over Iraq? The term has already broadened
> to mean ''a topic of questioning or conversation that is off-limits,''
> according to the Encarta World English Dictionary.
>
> Many of these words and phrases were coined in response to something
> new, ''either technologically or psychologically,'' says Justin Kaplan,
> editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
>
> In the current war, says Kaplan, terms such as ''weapons of mass
> destruction'' have entered widespread usage. ''Whether `shock and awe'
> passes into currency is debatable,'' he says. ''I have trouble
> remembering it, because it seems to lack some sort of internal energy.
> But time will tell.''
>
> According to author and historian Paul Fussell, warfare usually gets
> reported in euphemistic language ''because it's so awful.''
>
> ''The really nasty stuff, the exploded bodies and guts hanging out, is
> never available for close inspection,'' Fussell says. ''The big
> euphemisms now are `precision' and `accuracy,' and that language is
> used largely to dispel suspicions that bombing is extremely
> inaccurate.''
>
> A World War II veteran and former infantry officer, Fussell is no fan
> of warfare. Yet the more disillusioned the troops, he says, the richer
> the language of obfuscation and euphemism. And Vietnam is a prime
> example. ''It's no wonder reporters called military briefings the `five
> o'clock follies' over there,'' Fussell says.
>
> In this war, Soukhanov says, the transformation of words like
> ''embedded'' and ''unilateral'' from adjectives to nouns signals a
> functional shift in the language. ''Whether `shock and awe' morphs into
> a hyphenated adjective, like traffic pileup, we don't know,'' Soukhanov
> says. ''If it brings a tyrant down, it could become commonplace.
> `Regime change,' on the other hand, has already started morphing into
> figurative use in areas like business and politics.''
>
> The Atlantic Monthly's senior editor, Barbara Wallraff, who oversees
> the magazine's Word Count column, is hesitant to predict which words
> and phrases might take up permanent residence in the American psyche
> once the war is over. One new term she approves of, though, is ''war
> fighter,'' a generic term for any serviceman or servicewoman.
>
> ''I'm rooting for that one, because it's a very useful word,'' Wallraff
> says. ''Still, it's a very democratic process. We all get to decide,
> not just the experts.''
>
> Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.
>
> This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 3/27/2003. © Copyright
> 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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