From: David Lubkin (extropy@unreasonable.com)
Date: Thu Apr 18 2002 - 16:20:58 MDT
This began in a discussion of Middle Eastern politics but I've changed the
subject line to reflect a segue into applied semantics.
At 01:14 PM 4/18/2002 -0400, CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>Ethnic cleansing is not mass murder, it's mass eviction.
It was my understanding that the phrase "ethnic cleansing" referred to a
comprehensive campaign to remove an ethnic group from a region by any means
necessary, particularly through terror techniques like mass murder, rape
squads, death marches, and forced starvation.
While the term "ethnic cleansing", interpreted literally, may be an
appropriate term for mass eviction, I have only seen it used as a euphemism
for genocidal activity. Whatever the morality of mass eviction, referring
to it as ethnic cleansing is hyperbole that undercuts the fight to end true
ethnic cleansing. Much in the way that terms like murder, rape, child
abuse, and sexual harassment have been line-extended in ridiculous ways
that over--dramatize lesser offenses, undercutting efforts to prevent both
the actions that these terms truly refer to and lesser harms.
When I was younger, I didn't realize how important word choice is, and the
extent to which you can shape a discussion or attitude by leveraging the
emotional associations that a word has. The more we're conscious of the
implications of word choice, and other linguistic dimensions, the more
aware we can be of other people's hidden agendas in communicating with us
and the more impervious we can be to attempts to manipulate us. Equally,
through our own word choices and non-verbal attributes, we can influence
how receptive others will be to our message and, consequently, how likely
we are to achieve our goals.
-- David.
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