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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>In a recent message to the linguistic
anthropology list, Richard Senghas was asking for sources that address language,
discourse, and war / conflict for a university teach-in on the war in Iraq. I am
forwarding a message with a link to George Lakoff's "Metaphor and War, Again,"
and a text by Paul Chilton relating to Lakoff's text.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Alkistis Fleischer</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=P.A.Chilton@UEA.AC.UK href="mailto:P.A.Chilton@UEA.AC.UK">Paul Chilton</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=CRITICS-L@NIC.SURFNET.NL
href="mailto:CRITICS-L@NIC.SURFNET.NL">CRITICS-L@NIC.SURFNET.NL</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, March 28, 2003 3:33 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: Why are we silent?</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Courier New" size=2><SPAN class=965162511-28032003>Here is a
link to a paper by George Lakoff:</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=965162511-28032003>
<P><FONT face="Courier New" size=2><A
href="http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15414">http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15414</A></FONT></P>
<P> </P>
<P><FONT face="Courier New" size=2><SPAN class=965162511-28032003>Also, here are
some additional thoughts in the attachment, and copied below.</SPAN></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Courier New" size=2><SPAN
class=965162511-28032003></SPAN></FONT> </P><FONT face="Courier New"
size=2><SPAN class=965162511-28032003><B>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Brief thoughts relating to George Lakoff"s
"Metaphor and War, Again"</FONT></B></P>
<P align=justify></P><B><FONT size=4>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Reaching the final days: metaphor, mind and
how to make an ultimatum</FONT></B></FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>In order to go to war in democracies, and even
in dictatorships, you have to give your people a reason--a <I>casus belli</I>
and some reasoned justifications, which may or may not draw in a general way on
just war theory (present threat to the nation, proportionality of means, etc.).
When you've done that, then you issue an <B>ultimatum</B> to the enemy, and if
they do not do what you want, you send in the missiles, bombers and foot
soldiers. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>All this is done by means of LANGUAGE. The aim
is to get people's brains into a state similar to that of the speaker. A good
way to do this is to use metaphors, as George Lakoff has pointed out. People
store in their long-term memory learned cognitive frames and other cognitive
set-ups, plus the means to manipulate them on-line in discourse-processing. One
is of course free to do what one likes with these cognitive resources. In
principle. In practice, especially in times of crisis, under all kinds of
cognitive and emotional pressures, many people simply assimilate the verbiage
coming into their minds from political leaders.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>I say that <I>in principle</I> one is free to
do what one likes with one's mind, even if one's mind has already been modified
by input from the verbal environment. More than that, if Coismides (1989) and
Sperber (2000), are anything like on the right track, we humans possess a
"cheater detector" and a "logico-rhetorical" module that equips us to resist
lies, distortions and misrepresentations. Of course, this ability needs
nurturing, and some explicit tools to make us of. To some extent, linguists can
help here. Being aware of metaphorical and similar cognitive processes (such as
blending) can help people get a handle on what politicians, and others, say.
Naturally, metaphor isn't the only persuasive process we need to look at, but we
might as well start there.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>George Lakoff (2003) has shown how the
following metaphors are used in the Bush administration's efforts to persuade
the American people, and the world to begin to massive violence against Iraq on
March 20, 2003: a nation is a person, the international community metaphor,
rational actor model, the self-defense story, the rescue story.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>I would like to add a little more to our
understanding of the cognitive processes that constitute political
decision-making and political persuasion. Let's return to the question of
issuing an ultimatum. If you think about it, it is an extraordinary bit of human
behaviour. I would guess that our genetically near cousins, the chimpanzees,
don't do ultimatums, though they apparently get up to other kinds of
machiavellian tricks. In human societies, ultimata are literally the ultimate
stage in the step-by-step process of going to war. How do we do it? What mental
resources are tapped?</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Of course, ultimata are not just aimed at the
adversary. In the case of President Bush's ultimatum in his Address to the
Nation ( 8:01 p.m. EST, March 17, 2003 ), the main point is to persuade the
American nation, and perhaps other listeners. Nor is it enough to simply say
that ultimata are a species of speech act, akin to Threatening and Warning. They
are that, of course. But there is more to it. Speech acts engage cognitive
processes--how else could they work?</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Below I sketch some of the metaphors that
constitute the cognitive process "giving an ultimatum". Time is of the essence
in ultimata. You have to show that action is crucially time-sensitive. You have
to show a sort of causal connection between time and two events. The causal
connection is, as a number of semantic analyses have shown, frequently couched
as a conditional. If X does/does not do Y by time <I>t</I>, then A will do B
after time <I>t</I>. Doing or not doing Y in some way causes B.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>That is a very abstract template. In practice,
it seems likely that human minds engage image schemata and other cognitive
objects, including metaphor, to grasp this sort of abstraction. In some curious
way "grasping" it means making it (seem) "real". So, we'd expect ultimata to
involve metaphors for time and action and causation. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>If one looks closely at Bush's Address to the
Nation that is exactly what one does find. Here are a few examples, for others
to follow up and check whether I am on the right lines.</FONT></P><I>
<P align=justify></P>
<P></I><B> </P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>METONYMY</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></B><FONT face=Arial>Evoking a particular frame by mentioning a
part of that frame (a person, object etc.) is commonplace--as we know from the
famous example "the ham sandwich wants his coffee". The cognitive effect is
probably that we tend to focus on the individual or item actually mentioned, and
as in the case of metaphor, put the associated frame together with its details
and implications into the background. If we attack "Saddam Hussein", we are
obscuring the rest of the cognitive frame of which he is a part--ordinary Iraqis
who would be harmed in the attack, perhaps 50 000 civilian deaths according to
Amnesty International estimates. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>It can work the other way round too. That is
to say, a category (or frame) name can stand for the individual parts. So if we
attack "Iraq", that too takes the cognitive focus away from ordinary Iraqis. But
category labels can be actors, too. Early in his address, the President
says:</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"the <I>world</I> has engaged in 12 years of
diplomacy…"</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>The ad hoc category label "the world" obscures
a great deal. The individuals, and even the individual states who might have
been involved in diplomacy, cannot be identified from this
expression.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>The pronoun <I>we</I> can also act as a label
for ad hoc social categories, usually when they are ill-defined ones. The
pronoun <I>we</I> picks out a very vague category, that can be filled out in
different ways by different listeners. President Bush says:</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"<I>we</I> have passed more than a dozen
resolutions…". Who exactly?</FONT></P>
<DIR>
<DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"the United States and other nations did
nothing to deserve or invite this threat".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P></DIR></DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Who exactly passed more than a dozen
resolutions? Who exactly are the nations that are put into the category who are
threatened yet do not deserve it, i.e. are innocent? How many facts and
questions do these representations conceal?</FONT></P>
<P align=justify> </P>
<P align=justify></P><B>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>EVENTS ARE THINGS, THINGS MOVE and POINTS IN
TIME ARE MOVING THINGS</FONT></B></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Things move. Generally things move when some
force, typically coming from a human agent, moves them. But language lets us
talk as if <I>things propel themselves</I>. It follows that, by the metaphor
events are things, events too can propel themselves. In other words things can
"just happen":</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"if war <I>comes</I>"</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"every measure has been taken to <I>avoid</I>
war".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Here the underlying image schema has a moving
object--"war"-- approaching us. Time, as we know from a great deal of research
on metaphor, gets metaphorically imagined as a moving thing, or as a landmark
toward which the observer moves. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>The President opens his Address to the Nation
by saying:</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"events in Iraq have now <I>reached </I>the
final days of decision….".</FONT></P>
<DIR>
<DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"before the day of horror can <I>come</I>,
before it is too late to act, this danger will be
removed".</FONT></P></DIR></DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"all the decades of deceit and cruelty have
now <I>reached an end</I>"</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"the day of your liberation is
<I>near</I>.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>So, without specifying exactly which events
and which horror, we have a spatial representation in which something has (on
the President's assertion) come to an end point. In the same representation,
something that by implication is on the same path, is coming towards us--as the
word "come" alone presupposes. Therefore, there's a space (of time) between the
end point and the approaching object--between the the "end" of one series of
events and the coming "days of horror". </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>What does a human do in a such a scenario? You
can get out of the way, or you can act to stop the approaching object. Since we
gotta act (see below), it follows--at least within the presidential
discourse--that, well, we gotta act to stop the approaching object. The causal
link is not spelled out but it is implied that the approaching object
<I>will</I> be stopped. The implication emerges through the other part of the
scenario. There is a <I>different</I> object approaching: liberation is
"near".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>This scenario plays an important background
role in the President's address. Setting up a time scale is crucial to doing
ultimatum acts. Answering the questions "why now?", "why at the time you say?"
is crucial. The scenario above, in which one thing has moved to a stop, and
another thing is approaching, gives the answers by defining what is "too late"
and what is "not too late". Thus,</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<DIR>
<DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"it is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain"
(because his regime has "reached an end").</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P></DIR></DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>On the other hand, "it is not too late" for
the Iraqi military to surrender to the American forces, before "war comes".
Moreover, within the same metaphorically defined scenario, the approaching
object ("danger") will be physically taken displaced--it will be "removed". So,
it is not "too late" to act.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>In this way the scenario pinpoints "now" as
the moment to act. It is forced (or caused) by the oncoming object. Why are "we"
acting now?</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"We are acting now because the risks of
inaction would be far greater."</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>OK, what does that mean and how do you make it
"real"? Well, bearing in mind that the threat-object is on a collision course
with where we stand now…</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<DIR>
<DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"We can choose to <I>meet</I> that threat now,
where it <I>arises</I>, before it can <I>appear suddenly</I> in our skies and
cities".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P></DIR></DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>The questions of whether any actual connection
exists between Saddam Hussein"s government and the potential for terrorist
attacks on the USA, or whether he possesses the potential for nuclear attacks on
the USA or for biochemical attacks on the USA--such questions are obscured by
the metaphors. Possibly, however, facts and reasons are unnecessary because the
entrenched metaphorical processes are so cognitively powerful.</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P><B>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>THINGS ARE PERSONS</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></B><FONT face=Arial>We can have double metaphors, such that
events are things and things are persons. Since persons are intentional agents
with desires and beliefs, so are events. Persons make mistakes, too, and often
fail. Hence, "peaceful efforts", which only indirectly evokes persons who do
things, may "fail":</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"peaceful efforts … have failed…". </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Whose efforts, exactly, and what were the
efforts? The metaphors, built into our lexical ways of speaking, obscure the
details and obscure the questions. </FONT></P><B>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>ACTIONS ARE PATHS</FONT></B></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Not surprisingly human actions are
conceptualised as movements along a path towards a goal. Our image schemata for
Paths--i.e. our intuitive grasp of moving around in space--inherently have
locations, obstacles, etc. as parts. There is strong pressure for politicians,
especially national leaders, to represent themselves as very active actors.
Presidents and Prime Ministers believe that they must be seen to be "doing
something". They also believe it is their job to get others to do things--or to
"go in certain directions". This why political leaders talk of "guiding",
"steering", leading", "being in the driving seat", and so forth. This is also
why the "ship of state" has been a profound metaphor in the political discourse
of western nations: ships have to have commanders to keep them on course. So,
unsurprisingly…</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>We find the President saying, for example:
</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<DIR>
<DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"the United States and other nations have
<I>pursued</I> patient and honourable efforts…"</FONT></P></DIR></DIR>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>and, more graphically,</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"instead of <I>drifting toward tragedy</I>, we
will <I>set a course toward</I> safety".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>As if "tragedy" and "safety" were locations.
In the case of "safety" the intuitive feeling that "safety" is indeed a place,
runs deep. But it is not necessarily helpful. (cf. Chilton 1996). The ship
metaphor has a range of possible entailments. For example, if you are captain of
a vessel, it is certainly your duty to seek to stay on course. So , President
Bush:</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>"No act of theirs [of enemies] can <I>alter
the course</I>…of this country".</FONT></P>
<P align=justify></P><B>
<P align=justify> </P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>REFERENCES</FONT></B></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Cosmides, L. 1989, the logic of social
exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason?, <I>Cognition</I>, 31:
187-276</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Chilton, P. 1996, <I>Security Metaphors</I>,
Peter Lang</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Chilton, P. and Lakoff, G.. Foreign policy by
metaphor. In C. Schäffner and A.L. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Wenden (ed.), <I>Language and Peace</I>,
Harwood, 1995</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Lakoff, G. 2003, Metaphor and war, again.
www.alternet.org</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT face=Arial>Sperber, D. 2000, <I>Metarepresentations. A
Multidisciplinary Perspective</I>, OUP</FONT></P></SPAN></FONT>
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