|
Hey JumpinJesus, now I see where we're crossing:
I'm not claiming that discursive language is employed in a premeditated fashion by everyone who uses it.
We do, however, speak in patterns that confirm and shape our perceptions and allow us to conduct ourselves in certain ways. Words do not just fly out of our mouths--our brain selects them and then we use them. Our brains select them based on a myriad of reasons--if they didn't carefully select them we would speak gibberish.
I'm not attributing some sinister motive to his words--they are a rational response to the situation. Now that you have a crash course in discursive practices start to listen whether different groups of people speak in different patterns.
Ingot, or slang, allows people in particular groups to share worldviews and communicate with one another. We do this in the office, on the web (LOL, ROFLMA, and etc.), as well as in the military.
The fact that military personel use "engage" to describe any killing of an opponent doesn't detract from the realization that such a word sanitizes the reality (as opposed to the Iraqi usage of "brains and blood" all over the dashboard) that one human being killed another human being.
__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
|