Latest SOTA ('homicide attack')

Damien Hall halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Tue Jan 17 19:52:53 UTC 2006


I forwarded the exchange about 'homicide attack'

>>Twenty people were killed in Afghanistan today by a terrorist bomb.
>>Fox News Live adds the following :
>>
>>  "It was a remote controlled bomb and *not* a homicide attack."

to my girlfriend, who said that the 'homicide attack' part had been added by Fox
News because they don't use the phrase 'suicide attack';  they don't think it's
negative enough.  I suppose that if you don't want to use the phrase that
everyone else uses for these kinds of attacks, you still have to have some way
of talking about them, and 'homicide attack' is theirs, which is sad when it is
used in this context.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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