Lezione 1

Otherness=alterità Processo di othering=rendere “altro”, differenziare

What is language? What is linguistics?

Language: cultural construction that people use to communicate, symbols

Linguistics is the study of languages

Mind-language = symbols you have in your mind and decode using your language

misunderstandings are due to the arbitrariety of the language

Lezione 2

Il modo in cui pensiamo influenza il modo in cui agiamo e parliamo (e viceversa)

Word slut -> in shakespare’s works the word had a different meaning from the one it has now, in the past it
meant “sciatta”. Why did the meaning change so much? Beacause now the female’s sexual life is seen as
something dirty

Language

1. A body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same
community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition: the two
languages of Belgium; a Bantu language; the French language; the Yiddish language.
2. Communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional
ways with conventional meanings; speech
3. The system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (opposed to speech).
4. any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people,
who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another.
5. any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means
of communicating thought, emotion, experience etc.: the language of mathematics; sign language.
6. the means of communication used by animals: the language of birds
7. communication of meaning in any way; medium that is expressive, significant, etc.: the language of
flowers; the language of art

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the
principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words
involves a process of free creation. Noam Chomsky

HOW DOES THIS INFLUENCE OUR COMMUNICATION? WHAT IS INVOLVED IN COMMUNICATION

BESIDES VERBAL LANGUAGE? HOW SHOULD WE DEAL WITH CULTURE-EMBEDDED LANGUAGE(S)?
Multicultural, cross-cultural and intercultural communication -> differences?

Multicultural essentially describes the presence of diverse groups, and cultural traditions within the same
space. Simply acknowledges the existance of different groups.

Cross-cultural communication, differences are understood and acknowledged, and can bring about
individual change but not collective transformations. One culture is usually considered “the norm” and all
the others are compared or contrasted to the dominant.

Intercultural describes communities in which there is a deep understanding and respect for all cultures.
Intercultural communication focuses on the mutual exchange of ideas and cultural norms and the
development of deep relationships. In an intercultural society, no one is left unchanged because everyone
learns from one another and grows together.

Lezione 3

Interculturality: is the interaction of the people from different cultural backgrounds using authentic
language appropriately in a way that demonstrates knowledge and understanding of the cultures. It is the
ability to experience the culture of another person and to be open minded, interested, and curious about
that person and culture.

Spencer-Oatey and Franklin’s (2009: 3) definition:

An intercultural situation is one in which the cultural distance between the participants is significant
enough to have an effect on interaction/communication that is noticeable to at least one of the parties.

Intercultural communication vs. Cross-cultural communication Two methodological APPROACHES

1) Two main approaches are emphasized: cross-cultural communication vs.intercultural

communication. What comes out is that cross-cultural communication approach is a comparative
approach that allows to show up the differences in the field of communication (informal vs. formal
behaviour, rigid time vs. fluid time; expressive vs. reserved behaviour …) but does not consent to
understand what to do effectively to communicate with different cultures.
2) In the Intercultural Communication approach, as highlighted by Chen and Starosta (1998),
“successful intercultural interaction centers on communication processes among people from
 different cultures”. What is important here, instead of showing the differences in the interaction
between two people coming from different cultures, is the ability to establish interpersonal
relationships by understanding our counterparts through the effective exchange of verbal and non
verbal behaviours

Main elements of Hall's paradigm for Intercultural Communication:

1- systematic empirical study and the classification of nonverbal communication (defined as

communication that does not involve the exchange of words)
2- emphasis, especially in nonverbal communication, on the out-of-conscious level of information-
exchange
3- a non-judgmental view toward and acceptance of cultural differences
4- participatory training methods in Intercultural Communication.

Personal space  hall explains: not only the personal but cultural driven also. This personal area is
considered as one’s own territory. If this space is violated by an unwanted or unwelcome entity, it creates
an uncomfortable feeling to the person being violated. The amount of personal space varies a lot according
to the place of living of the individuals. People living in densely populated areas tend to have smaller
personal space requirements than people living in more rural areas for example. Furthermore, the distance
between two individuals having a conversation is not just a coincidence but a cultural tendency.

Polychronic vs monochronic cultures

Hall examined how time is seen in different culures

Polychronic cultures  time can’t be saved ot restored, might as well do something pleasant with it.

Poly people take more tasks at the same time and are fine with it

Mono people rather do 1 task at the time

Italy is a poly culture. Things with the same level of importance are done at the same time.

Finland is a mono culture. It is common to do one thing at a time, and concentrate your actions only on tha.
The attention to the time is structured and everything has to be done on time.

Culture variety factors

1. high context VS low context

high = the communicators assume a great deal of commonality of knowledge and views, so that
less is spelled out explicitly and much more is implicit or communicated in indirect ways. MANY
PIECES OF INFORMATION ARE DEDUCED BY THE CONTEXT OF COMMUNICATION OR BY SUBTEXTS
(THAT IN-GROUP MEMBERS UNDERSTAND WHILE OUT-GROUP MEMBERS DO NOT)
low = things are fully spelled out. Less room for subtext, in-between-the-lines messages. Context is
less relevant than verbal communication.
2. Individualism VS collectivism
In individualist cultures, individual uniqueness, self-determination is valued. A person is all the
more admirable if they are a "self-made man" or "makes up their own mind" or show initiative or
 work well independently. Collectivist cultures expect people to identify with and work well in
groups which protect them in exchange for loyalty and compliance.

Lezione 4

Do’s and don’t’s of intercultural communication

Do’s Don’t’s

1. Avoid assumptions, jokes 1. Using the same approach

which are misunderstood world-wide
2. Use symbols, diagrams and 2. Considering traditional
pictures knowledge and practices as
3. Avoid using slang and idioms, ‘backward’
choosing words that will 3. Letting cultural differences
convey only the most specific become a source of conflict
denotative meaning that hinder the process or work
4. Investigate their culture’s 4. Fail to ignore culturally-
perception dependent enabling and
5. Take cultural and local counteracting forces
differences into account 5. Fail to take language barriers
6. Say what you do and do what into account
you say. Make sure that your 6. Others: thumbs up, eye
communication is line with the contact, nodding
audience; use understandable
language

Denotative = objective

Connotative = words that can have multiple meanings

-1- Case study: “Asian and western dinner etiquette – differences”

- sounds they make/slurping

- the way he sits

- the way he uses uses chopsticks

- different languages

- mistake with the glass

- rapport (explained below)

4 main issues in relation to intercultural discourse:

 1. Intercultural competence: a continous and life long journey to increase people’s skill in being
proficient in intercultural and intracultural knowledge;
2. Achieving understanding
3. Understand the sense of identity
4. Managing rapport

Rapport = a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are "in sync" with
each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly.

Techniques that are GENERALLY beneficial in building rapport:

1) matching your body language (i.e., posture, gesture, etc.);

2) indicating attentiveness through maintaining eye contact if the culture accepts eye contact;

In conversation, some verbal behaviors associated with increased rapport are:

3) sharing personal information of gradually increasing intimacy (or, "self-disclosure"), and referring to
shared interests or experiences.

Lezione 5

What is language?

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual, body, or written symbols by means of which human
beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of
language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional
release (David Crystal)

“Language is the expression of ideas by means of speechsounds combined into words. Words are combined
intosentences, this combination is similar to that of ideas intomore complex thoughts or ideologies.”
(Henry Sweet)

“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by meansof which a social group cooperates.” (Bernard
Bloch and George L. Trager)

Language varieties:

1. dialects, geographically different systems of communication that may impede but do not prevent
mutual understanding;
2. sociolect, refers to the speech patterns employed by a specific segment of the society;
3. ethnolect, language patterns employed by ethnic groups
4. idiolect, speech habits of a single person

Lezione 6

The science of language is known as linguistics. It includes what are generally distinguished as descriptive
linguistics and historical linguistics.

Descriptive Linguistics can be divided into theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics (especially for social
uses) that has several subdisciplines: Sociolinguistics/ Anthropological Linguistics / Psycholinguistics /
Neurolinguistics / Forensic Linguistics, Discourse Analysis
Etymology = “process of understanding, reasoning, thought”

Discourse denotes written and spoken communications such as: The totality of codified language used in a
given field of intellectual enquiry and of social practice, such as legal discourse, medical discourse, religious
discourse, anthropological discourse etc.

Discourse analysis, or discourse studies, is the approach to analyze written, vocal, or visual language use, or
any significant semiotic event in a given field (politics, advertising, gender, history, interculturality)

Discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary' but, within 'naturally
occurring language”, they aim at revealing dynamics of power,as well as the socio-psychological and socio-
cultural characteristics of a person or of a group through analysis of their language, linguistic choices and
ways to express themselves and talk/write about the others.

1) A Discourse does not exist per se (in itself), but is related to other discourses, by way of interdiscursivity;
2) Discourse Analysis features the questions and answers of What is the text about? and What is not the
text about? and “How is the text written/produced/transmitted? These are conducted according to the
meanings of the concepts used in the given field of enquiry, such as anthropology, ethnography, and
sociology; cultural studies and literary theory; science, feminism etc.

Discourse analyst Norman Fairclough argues that the ability to understand how language functions, to think
about it in different ways, is crucial to understanding society, culture and other people. Fairclough argues
that to understand power, persuasion and how people live together, a conscious engagement with
language is necessary. That is, critical thinking about language can assist in resisting oppression, protecting
the powerless and building a good society.

Although the primary purpose of language is to facilitate communication (transmission of information from
one person to another), sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies have drawn attention to a range of
other functions for language: Language expresses a national or local identity (a common source of conflict
in situations of multiethnicity around the world). Also important is the range of functions seen in
imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious expression.  CULTURE

Stereotypes = preconceived and oversimplified notion of characteristics typical of a person or group. In

social psychology and socio-linguistics, a stereotype is any thought widely adopted about specific types of
individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or
behaviors as a whole.

Stereotypes can be:

1. explicit stereotypes are those people who are willing to verbalize and admit to other individuals. It
also refers to stereotypes that one is aware that one holds, and is aware that one is using to judge
people. People can attempt to consciously control the use of explicit stereotypes (face
management)
2. implicit stereotypes are those that lay on individuals' sub-consciousness, that they have no control
or awareness of.

Lezione 7
Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination

These 3 categories are understood as related but they are different:

1) Stereotypes are regarded as the most cognitive component and often occur without conscious
awareness
2) prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping
3) discrimination is one of the behavioral components of prejudicial reactions.

In this tripartite view of intergroup attitudes, stereotypes reflect expectations and beliefs about the
characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one's own, prejudice represents the
emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions.

Possible prejudicial effects of stereotypes are:

1) Justification of ill-founded prejudices or ignorance

2) Unwillingness to rethink one's attitudes and behavior
3) Preventing some people of stereotyped groups from entering or succeeding in activities or fields

Racism

Racism is prejudice and discrimination against an individual based solely on one’s membership in a specific
racial/ethnic group (such as toward African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans,
European Americans).

Lezione 8

-3- Case study: “Lupita Nyongo and Grazia magazine”

Heritage = features belonging to the culture of a particular society, such as traditions, languages, or
buildings, that were created in the past and still have historical importance.

She is disappointed

Key words:

- Heritage
- “I now know”  she didn’t know before
- “being an example”
- Beautiful
- Natural is not the same as native

The stranger

The stranger, for Simmel, is a member of the group in which s/he lives and participates and yet remains
distant from other – “native” – members of the group. In comparison to other forms of social distance and
difference (such as class, gender, and even ethnicity) the distance of the stranger has to do with his/her
“origins.” HIS /HER HERITAGE.

The stranger is perceived as extraneous to the group and even though he is in constant relation to other
group members, her/ his “distance” is more emphasized than his “nearness”.
That is, the stranger is perceived as being in the group but not of the group.

Lezione 9

The linguistic sign

Humans’ capacity to create signs that mediate between them and their enviroment

A signifier and a signified

A sign: neither the word nor the object but the relation between the two  arbitrariness of the linguistic
sign

An onomatopeia is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes.

Onomatopoetic words are not the same across all languages; they conform to some extent to the broader
linguistic system they are part of; hence the sound of a clock may be tick tock in English, dī dā in Mandarin,
or katchin katchin in Japanese, or "tiktik" (टिक-टिक) in Hindi.

Signs

The meaning of signs:

- Denotative: ex. Rose denotes a sweet-smelling flower

- Connotative: ex. Rose connotes love, passion

Idiomatic expression

Group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.
(ex. Occhi foderati di prosciutto, over the moon)

Proverb

A simple and concrete saying, popularly known and repeated, that expresses a truth based on common
sense or experience. They are often metaphorical. (ex. you can’t have your cake and eat it)means: to
have or do two good things at the same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time)

Noam Chomsky:
 1. To have Competence in a language means to have knowledge of the grammar.
2. Performance refers to the way individual speakers actually use language. It is possible, therefore,
for a speaker to have grammatical competence of a language, but lack communicative competence
of that same language because they are unaware of rules of social relationships, taboo or other
cultural conventions. Knowing how to greet someone or what constitutes appropriate ‘small talk’
are examples of this competence. Communicative competence has also been called ‘sociolinguistic
competence’ or ‘pragmatic competence’.

Langue (1) vs parole (2) (De Saussure)

1. General abstract grammatical language system

2. The individual use of language

the speaker draw on langue to produce parole. Langue is the system that makes parole possible

Denotative and connotative

Literal or DENOTATIVE language uses words exactly according to their conventionally accepted meanings or
denotation. (ex. I love my sunshine)

Figurative language or CONNOTATIVE LANGUAGE uses words in a way that deviates from their
conventionally accepted definitions in order to convey a more complicated meaning or heightened effect.
(ex. You are my sunshine)

Semantic and pragmatic

Semantic Meaning refers to the meaning of words in a language and the meaning within the sentence.
Semantics considers the meaning of the sentence without the context.

Semantics is just the meaning that the grammar and vocabulary impart, it does not account for any implied
meaning. Pragmatic Meaning looks at the same words and grammar used semantically, but within context.
Ineach situation, the various listeners in the conversation define the ultimate meaning of the words, based
on other clues that lend subtext to the meaning.

Ex. ASSHOLE (with an angry tone to a man in the bus) ASSHOLE (with a laughing tone to a friend)

John Austin on speech acts (“How to do things with words”)

The three components of a communication, from a pragmatic point of view, are:

1. Locution- the semantic or literal significance of the utterance.

2. Illocution- the intentions of the speaker.
3. Perlocution- how it was received by the listener, the effects and consequences of the previous two.

Lezione 10

Prescription vs description
Prescriptivism is the term used for approaches to language that set out rules for what is regarded as “good”
or “correct” usage.

Descriptivism is an evidence-based approach to language that describes, in an objective manner, how

language is being used. Most contemporary academic linguists are descriptivists, but prescriptivist
approaches abound in schools, style guides, internet comment threads, and parental chidings (rimproveri).

Textrovert = a person who feels more comfortable talking over text than to your face

Textpectation = the anticipation felt when waiting for a response to a text

Askhole = some who asks many stupid, pointless, or obnoxious questions.

Nonversation = a completely worthless conversation; small talk

Irrightional = someone who irrationally believes he’s always right

Lezione 11

-4- Case study: “Word crimes” by ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic:

1. Everybody shut up / nevermind I give up = arrogant, superior, assertive

2. If you can’ write in the proper way = prescriptivism
3. I’ll try to educate ya = form of superiority
4. Never raised in a sewer (fogna)
5. Moron = coglione
6. Go to pre-school

Grammar mistakes =/= word crimes

7. You dumb mouth-breather

8. Your grammar is dopey (drugs/fatta)
9. Get out of the gene pool

Homophones = suonano uguale ma hanno significati diversi (ex. There/their)

The work has received some negative attention from linguists and educators, who view the prescriptivism
celebrated in the song as scientifically ill-informed, arbitrary, and encouraging of unnecessary and
damaging social distinctions.

"The call to feel superior and to put other people down for writing errors".

About the excuses: he didn’t really apologise for all problems that people had with his songs but just for the
usage of the word “spastic” stating that he didn’t know this word could be considered as offensive to some
people (kinda hard to believe). + the song didn’t really make fun of the people that are obsessed about
grammar as he said, but just of that people that don’t use grammar “correctly”.

Lezione 12!!!
Language and power

People who speak the standard variety of British English, for example, will be thought to be more educated
and more capable than others. This may give them access to better employment, institutions with power or
even a better education. This is because of the attitudes that people have about language. While the
speakers gain from being able to speak the standard language, and so have a degree of power, it is not the
case that they –as individuals –are controlling others. Rather, having competence in a prestigious language
is in itself beneficial.

When a manager uses a particular form of language the power comes partially from her position (as your
boss) but perhaps also from the kind of language that is used. We can think about this not as physical
power, or even institutional power, but as ‘symbolic power’ (Bourdieu 1991). Calling it symbolic power
draws our attention to the link between power and symbols, that is, between power and language

It is possible to insult, persuade, command, compliment, encourage or make a promise using language.
While these can be seen as individual acts, when repeated over time, the culmination of such linguistic acts
might change the way a person sees an issue. Thus, while language is important in the exercise of power at
particular moments, we also need to understand that language can have an influence across long stretches
of time. I can be commanded to do something now, but I can also be influenced to think and behave in a
certain way pretty much all the time.

Like language, an ideology has a structure. This structure can be mapped and understood by paying
attention to the way the choices are made in language. That is, language creates and represents ideological
concerns. The general idea is that because language is connected to ideology in this way, we can be
encouraged to do things, not because someone has commanded us at a particular point in time, but
because we have internalised certain values that mean we want to do certain things.

You can think about ideology as a way of structuring the manner in which language is used to communicate
a more general message involving values and beliefs; in short, a worldview.

There are ideas we take for granted, values that we hold and ideas that we believe in that seem perfectly
natural. It is this common sense, this seemingly natural and normal way of thinking and acting, that we can
talk about in terms of the dominant ideology, or hegemonic ideology. So, ideology is a way of talking about
a whole set of ways of thinking and acting.

Linguistic diversity: the first part of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Because of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, and because signs take their meaning
from their relationship to other signs, there is no single way for languages to describe reality. The world can
be described in any number of ways and languages differ in terms of the signs that comprise them. Sapir
was an anthropological linguist and as such, encountered the different ways languages represent the world.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVISM AND DETERMINISM. The second part of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

The hypothesis of language relativism is that our language has a bearing on the way we think, that is, that
the terms of our language have some kind of effect on the categories of thought available to us. The strong
version of the hypothesis, linguistic determinism, is often called ‘the prison house view of language’; that
the limits of language are the limits of the world.

The idea that language influences the way we behave is most obvious in the case of common metaphors in
different cultures. -----> CONCEPTUAL/COGNITIVE METAPHORS
Lakoff and Johnson (“Metaphors we live by”, 1980) argue that our thought processes are structured along
metaphorical lines: i.e. when we describe a verbal argument, we are likely to use words such as ‘attack’ ,
‘defend’ , ‘won’ , ‘lost’ and so on.

ARGUMENT IS WAR: We use the language of war to describe arguments. They argue that this metaphor
(ARGUMENT IS WAR) actually structures how we think about arguments.

The words we use are thus evidence of the way we think. (ex. I demolished his argument, I’ve never won an
argument with him, your claims are indefensible)

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things--verbal
discourse and armed conflict--and the actions performed are different kinds of actions.

But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR.

The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and, consequently, the
language is metaphorically structured.

Argue VS Counterargue VS Outargue

Lezione 13

Time is money

Happy is up/Sad is down: Physical basis: Drooping Posture typically goes along with sadness and
depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state.

1) Every language choice, whether consciously or not, demonstrates an ideology.

2) We all have habitual ways of thinking about the world and this is reflected in the habitual choices
we make in language. Because it’s habitual, we don’t think about the values expressed by the
choices.
3) To be able to think about these issues of representation we need tools such as cognitive
metaphorization or transitivity analysis to describe these choices.
4) Linguistic Choices are very often ideological: they rely on certain assumptions about what is correct
or standard. The way that correctness is defined is itself an ideological act as well as a way of
exerting power.

Transitivity Analysis is concerned with who does what to whom/what.

The syntagmatic axis describes the order in which words are placed; The paradigmatic axis is used to refer
to all the other words that could have been chosen

Agent deletion

“Woman was raped in Brixton” (The Observer 2017)

What if… “Woman was raped in Brixton by a teen”  there is a problem with teenagers

Or… “Woman was raped in Brixton by a black teen” (The Sun 2017)  the focus is being shifted; there is an
explicit connection between black-teen + an implicit -> black people as criminal.

Lezione 14

-5- Case study: “Britain invaded by an army of illegals”

-Britain invaded by an army of illegals, Britain is being swamped by a tide of illegal immigrants, immigration
officers are being overwhelmed with work.
La Bretagna è concettualizzata come una vittima.
-So desperate for a job that they will work for a pittance, they steal our job. When you are very poor you
end up stealing or doing something illegal, criminality.
Espressione ‘our’ per sottolineare il fatto che non sia ‘roba loro’. 
-Another peculiar lexical choice, ten of thousands more. Fear of what you don't know, when you don’t
know the other. Continua minaccia iperbolica. So humble that they can be compared to slaves. Who made
them slaves? British people. Se loro prendono un salario minimo è perché sono presenti ingiustizie in
ambito legislativo. 
Illegals sneak in by:
-Deceiving immigration officers when they are quizzed at airports. 
-Disappearing after their entry visas run out.
-Forcing work permits and other documents.
-Running away from immigrant detention centres.
Autore ovviamente contro gli immigrati, vuole però dimostrare una sorta di empatia. 
‘Keep face’. It wasn’t so nice to talk badly about immigrants. He could have never say something so
negative. 

Opposite to biased/ prejudist communication there is: ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’

For some, it seems reasonable to think that language can be used in a way that doesn't discriminate or
demean.
This position is often referred to as ‘political correctness'. 
Diniego esplicito-> ‘non sono razzista ma’ 
Linguaggio eufemistico/ Euphemisms: 
-Persona di colore/ coloured person
We are all coloured people, but white is not seen as a colour.
-Vertically challenges
-Ethnic minorities
-Differently abled, different from what? from ‘normal people’

Language and politics

Political view of politics
Politics and the English Language, George Orwell 1946
Language that was used after the ww2. He believed that the language used was necessarily vague or
meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than to express it.
This unclear prose was a "contagion" which had spread to those who did ,not intend to hide the truth, and
it concealed a writer's thoughts from himself and others.
Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vaqueness, and individuality over political
conformity.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
Power of the word. With language you can change reality. Paradosso->solidity to pure wind.

Euphemism: an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest
something unpleasant. 
Some euphemisms are intended to amuse; while others use bland, inoffensive terms for things the user
wishes to mitigate. 
Euphemisms are used to refer to taboo topics (such as disability, sex, excretion, and death) in a polite way,
or to mask profanity  Desiderio di mitigare, di abbassare. 
Dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are offensive either about the subject matter or to the
audience, or both.
Orthophemism refers to neutral expressions. 

“WAR ON TERROR” became a pervasive euphemism for the war on militant Islam. A metaphor of war
referring to the international military campaign that was launched by the U.S. government after the
September 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on
terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to
Congress.

The term was originally used with a particular focus on countries associated with alQaeda. The term was
immediately criticised by such people as Richard B. Myers. WHY?
“Terror” does not define the enemy explicitly; it refers to enemy activity on the emotional level, singling out
violence as its core sense. The invasion of Iraq was called “a liberation”, “a broad and concerted campaign”,
. The war was also defined as “tearing down the apparatus of terror”, “confronting dictators”, and “regime
change” (to justify the invasion for a humanitarian reason)

The war on terror has brought a number of euphemisms in political narratives intended to justify illegal
treatment of American citizens or detainees from other nations:

1. “unlawful combatants”: prisoners of war

2. “enemy combatants”: “criminals”.
3. “prison abuse”: coined after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004 in order to avoid the word
“torture”, which clearly characterized what some American soldiers did in one of the prisons of
Saddam's former regime.

“Abuse” is a misdemeanour (REATO) or mistreatment, while “torture” denotes a violent crime which
involves an infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.

-6- Case study: “George Carlin on Euphemism”:

1. Shell (granata) shock  it’s when soldiers survive the war and still hear explosions once they coma
back home (ptsd)(ww1)
2. Battle fatigue (ww2)
3. Operational exhaustion (was in Korea)
4. PTSD  post traumatic stress disorder (war in Vietnam)

Americans use many euphemisms to face reality, to cope

Jargon = gergo

Some of the words used have the same semantic meaning (?)

Dysphemism is sometimes motivated by fear and distaste, but also by hatred and contempt. Speakers
resort to dysphemism to talk about people and things that frustrate and annoy them, that they disapprove
of and wish to disparage, humiliate and degrade […] Dysphemistic expressions include curses, name-calling,
and any sort of derogatory comment directed towards others in order to insult or to wound them.

Dysphemisms

“I’d bomb the shit ou of ISIS” Trump