L.I.E.S.    Language in Extreme Situations

A web against the use of Language as a Weapon of Mass Deception

 

 

 

Intro

     Cansados de que llamen "daños colaterales" a lo que no son sino inocentes víctimas civiles, de que a secuestrar y asesinar no nacionalistas le llamen "el problema vasco", de que 120 toneladas diarias de fuel que escapan por las grietas de un petrolero hundido sean "unos hilillos", de que ser despedido ilegalmente sea un "reajuste de plantilla" y de que, en general, se utilice el lenguaje para distorsionar, manipular y esconder realidades siempre atroces para los que las sufren, hemos decidido abrir este observatorio de vigilancia lingüística para recoger y denunciar el uso espúreo del lenguaje como "weapon of mass deception", especialmente a cargo de gobiernos, grandes multinacionales y, en muchos casos, medios de (des-)información.

     Adoptamos como editorial los dos textos recogidos más abajo:, el primero, The First Casualty,  de William Lutz (editor de "Quaterley Review of Doublespeak") describe lo que le pasa a la verdad - y al lenguaje - cuando estalla la guerra. Escrito originalmente en el año 1991a propósito de la primera guerra contra Irak, vuelve a tener hoy una trágica actualidad. El segundo texto, Mentiras,  de nuestro querido poeta Luis García Montero, describe con la precisión poética que caracteriza a su autor el sentimiento que nos ha llevado a abrir esta trinchera de defensa virtual contra el engaño masivo.

NO A LA GUERRA.


The First Casualty
 William Lutz

 
     Senator Hiram Johnson was wrong when in 1917 he observed that in war the first casualty is truth. In was, the first casualty is language. And with the language goes the truth. It as the Vietnam "conflict", not the Vietnam War. It was the Korean "police action", not the Korean War. It was the "pacification" of Gaul by Julius Caesar, not the brutal and bloody subjugation of Gaul. "Where they make a desert, they call it peace," observed the British chieftain Calgacus of the Roman conquest of Britain. War corrupts language.

     The doublespeak of war consists, as Orwell wrote of all such language, "of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness." It is, fundamentally, the language of insincerity, where there is a gap between the speaker's real and declared aims. It is language as an instrument for concealing and preventing thought, not for expressing or extending thought. Such language silences dialogue and blocks communication.

     During the Vietnam "conflict" we learned that mercenaries paid by the U.S. government were "civilian irregular defense soldier," refugees fleeing the war were "ambient non-combatant personnel," and enemy troops who survived bombing attacks were "interdictional nonsuccumbers." In Vietnam, American warplanes conducted "limited duration protective reaction strikes", during which they achieved an "effective delivery of ordnance." So it went too in the Persian Gulf.

     Just as officially there was no war in Korea or Vietnam, officially there was no war in the Persian Gulf. After all, Congress didn't declare war, it declared an authorization of the "use of force", a poer clearly delegated to Congress in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, which now reads: "Congress shall have the power to authorize the use of force." So now we have not war but Operation Desert Storm, or "ecercising the military option," or, according to President Bush, an "armed situation".

     During this "armed situation", massive bombing attacks became "efforts." Thousands of warplanes didn't drop tons of boms, "wapons systems" or "force packages" "visited a site". These "weapons systems" didn't drop their tons of bombs on buildings and human beings, they "hit" "hard" and "soft targets". During their "visits", these "weapons systems" "degraded," "neutralized," "attrited," "supressed," eliminated," "cleansed," "sanitized," "impacted," "decapitated," or "took out" targets; they didn't blow up bridges, roads, factories and other buildings, and the people who happened to be there. A "healthy day bombing" was achieved when more enemy "assets" were destroyed than expected.

     If the "weapons systems" didn't achieve "effective results" (blow up their targets) during their first "visit" (bombing attack) as determined by a "damage assessment study" (figuring out if everything was completely destroyed), the "weapons systems" "revisited the site" (bombed it again). Women, children, and other civilians killed or wounded during these "visits", and any schools, hospitals, museums, houses, or other "non-military" targets that were blown up, were "collateral damage" - the undesired damage or casualties produced by the effects from "incontinent ordnance" or "accidental delivery of ordnance equipment" - meaning the bombs and rockets missed their original targets.

     In order to function as it should and as we expect it to, language must be an accurate refection of that which it represents. The doublespeak of war is an instance of thought corrupting language and language corrupting thought.

     Such language is needed only if, as George Orwell, wrote, "one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them." Thus the phrase , "traumatic amputation" produces no mental pictures of soldiers with arms or legs blown off. The terms, "light" or "moderate" losses invoke no mental pictures of pilots burned beyond recognition in the twisted wreckage of their planes, of hundreds of soldiers lying dead on a battlefield or screaming in pain in field hospitals. Killing the enemy becomes the innocuous "serving the target," which invokes no mental picture of shooting, stabbing, or blowin another human being to small, bloody pieces. Clean-sounding phrases such as "effective delivery of ordnance," "precision bombing," and "surgical air strikes" evoke no mental pictures of thousands of tons of bombs fallin on electric power plants, communication centers, ralroad lines, and factories, or women, children, and old people huddling in the ruins of their homes and neighborhoods.

     The new doublespeak of war flowed smoothly as military spokesmen coolly discussed "assets" (everything from men and women soldiers to aircraft carries and satellites), the "suppresion of assets" (bomging everything from enemy soldiers to sewage plants), "airbone sanitation" (jamming enemy radar and radio, blowing up anti-aircraft gun and missiles, and shooting down enemy airplanes, "disruption" (bombing), "operations" (bombing), "area denial weapons" (cluster bombs, previously called anti-personnel bombs), "damage" (death and destruction, or the results of bombing), "attrition" (destruction, or the results of bombing).

     The massive bombing campaing (which included concentrated bombing by massed B-52s dropping thousands of tons of bombs in just one attack) directed against the Republican gard units of the Iraqi army were considered highly successful by General Norman Schwartzkopf, who based hiss assessment on "the delivery methods and volume that we've been able to put on them." Returning from a bombing attack, an American pilot said he had "sanitized the area". A Marine general told reporters, "We're prosecuting any target that's out there". And an artillery captain said, "I prefer not to say we are killing other people, I prefer to say we are servicing a target." Even with all this doublespeak, news of the "armed effort" was subject to "security review", not censorship. When language is so corrupted, what becomes of truth?.

     The use of technical, impersonal, bureaucratic, euphemistic language to describe war separates the act of killing from the idea of killing; it separates the word from that which it is supposed to symbolize. Such language is a linguistic cover-up designed to hide an unpleasant reality. It is language that lies by keeping us as far as possible from the reality it pretends to represent. With such language we create a psychological detachment from the horror that is war, and we become numb to the human suffering that is the inevitable result of war. With the doublespeak of war we are not responsible for the results of our actions. And war becomes a "viable" solution to our problems.

 (Reprinted from Quarterly Review of Doublespeak, vol. XVII, nº 4, Jul 1991)

 

  Mentiras
Luis García Montero

     Llega un momento en el que no se puede más. Se trata ya de una reacción física, de un nudo en los pulmones, de un agobio que te invade el cuerpo, que te revuelve la sangre, de un frío caliente que no te deja respirar. La mentira es un mal vino, esa copa que no emborracha, pero da dolor de cabeza y hunde a su víctima en un mar de crispación. No, ya no entra ni un bocado más del pastel seco, de la galleta rancia, ya no admite el corazón otra calada del cigarro empachado, ya no resisten los oídos más palabras de la boca que no se calla, y habla, habla, habla, hasta convertirnos las sienes en un cemento líquido.

     Lo peor de esta guerra, para los que no tenemos encima el ojo inteligente de las bombas norteamericanas, son las mentiras, el ejercicio descarado de la mentira, la forma impúdica, desvergonzada, cínica, despectiva, prepotente, cardenalicia, infernal, demagógica, con la que los políticos del Partido Popular mienten una y otra vez, transformando el aire del Parlamento en mentira, los periódicos en mentiras, las radios y las televisiones en mentiras. Ya no puedo escucharlos, me resulta imposible sostenerles la mirada sin sentir un agobio sanguíneo, una crispación carnal, una reacción física. Cada vez que hablan de la paz, cada vez que se presentan como defensores del orden internacional, cada vez que pregonan sus esfuerzos en la ayuda humanitaria, cada vez que dicen una cosa y hacen otra, como si fuéramos tontos por tierra, mar y aire, me sube el mal vino desde la humillación hasta la cólera. No puedo más, son superiores a mis fuerzas.

     Pensaba yo que lo peor de esta guerra iban a ser las catástrofes, los edificios bombardeados, las escenas crueles, los cadáveres, los niños corriendo, las banderitas de los vencedores. Pero confieso que las mentiras están resultando más canallas. Porque las mentiras no son interpretaciones diferentes de la ley, ni opciones políticas distintas, ni electoralismo (¡benditas elecciones!), ni propaganda. Son mentiras, mentiras podridas en la boca del mentiroso, palabras bombardeadas, verbos con los cimientos rotos, sustantivos en el fango, instituciones humanas destruidas.

     Nos quitan la paz y las palabras. El termómetro de la mentira ha subido en la política española más allá de lo admisible. La fiebre pasa a delirio y el delirio a colapso térmico en las intervenciones de estos pacifistas que imponen la guerra, de estos demócratas que traicionan a su país, de estos defensores del orden internacional que parten por la mitad a Europa y envenenan las aguas enfermizas de la ONU, de estos militantes de la solidaridad que hunden a un pueblo hundido, y no sólo me refiero a Irak, porque muchos ciudadanos españoles nos hundimos también al comprobar que nuestras democracias se quedan sin palabras y pueden ser tan crueles como las dictaduras, tan mentirosas como los altavoces del totalitarismo. Los jóvenes comprenderán el desamparo que supuso el franquismo si imaginan 40 años de mentiras de Aznar, de mentiras podridas, insoportables como un pastel seco, frías como la espina del cinismo. Más que las bombas, lo peor es este agobio que corta la respiración y revuelve la sangre cada vez que hablan los mentirosos.

(El País, 22/3/03)

 

 

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