36.3149, Reviews: Kill Talk: Janet McIntosh (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3149. Sun Oct 19 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3149, Reviews: Kill Talk: Janet McIntosh (2025)

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Date: 19-Oct-2025
From: Ifeoluwa Awopetu [ifeoluwapriscilla24 at gmail.com]
Subject: Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics: Janet McIntosh (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1803

Title: Kill Talk
Subtitle: Language and Military Necropolitics
Series Title: Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Language
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Oxford University Press
           http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/kill-talk-9780197808016?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaign=linguistics

Author(s): Janet McIntosh

Reviewer: Ifeoluwa Awopetu

SUMMARY
Janet McIntosh’s Kill Talk: Language and Military Necropolitics
explores how language sustains the moral, psychological, and political
structures of modern warfare. Written primarily for scholars in
linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, military studies, and
discourse analysis, the book’s accessible prose also extends its reach
to veterans and general readers concerned with the ethical dimensions
of military life. McIntosh tested portions of the manuscript with
veterans, ensuring that the work resonates with those whose
experiences it examines.
At its core, Kill Talk investigates how speech and sound—what McIntosh
terms “kill talk”- enable soldiers to both kill and be made killable
within the state’s necropolitical order. Drawing on Mbembe’s (2019)
theory of Necropolitics, she shows how linguistic practices regulate
who may live, who must die, and how soldiers linguistically cope with
that reality. The book also introduces the original concept of
“semiotic callousing,” describing how repeated exposure to verbal
aggression and demeaning speech dulls recruits’ emotional responses,
preparing them for violence while shaping how they later live with its
aftermath.
The book unfolds in four main sections, tracing a clear trajectory
from training through combat to the aftermath of war, mirroring the
soldier’s own transformation. In the opening section, Entry Points,
McIntosh defines “kill talk” and situates it within the framework of
Necropolitics, outlining how military language forms a “grammar of
killing” that structures the moral and emotional life of soldiers.
This introduction sets the stage for the book’s analytical journey
across the linguistic shaping of recruits, the communicative practices
of combat, and the processes of postwar rehumanization.
The second section, Training, goes into the discourse of boot camp.
Through chapters on yelling, insults, chants, and “head games,”
McIntosh shows how recruits are linguistically and emotionally
conditioned to endure aggression and suppress empathy. The sonic
violence of drill instructors’ voices, the ritualized humiliation of
insults and kill chants, and the moral disorientation of contradictory
commands collectively cultivate obedience and desensitization. The
final chapter in this section links these communicative practices to
broader U.S. cultural debates about masculinity and patriotism,
illustrating how military language mirrors national anxieties about
toughness and identity.
In the third section, Combat, McIntosh traces how the linguistic
patterns learned in training reemerge on the battlefield. She examines
the dehumanizing slurs and euphemisms that distance soldiers from
moral responsibility, moments when those linguistic frames collapse
under the trauma of killing, and the perverse humor that allows
soldiers to cope with death while normalizing violence.
The final section, After War, shifts from deconstruction to repair.
McIntosh explores how veterans use poetry and art to rehumanize
themselves and reclaim language as a medium of empathy. Through
projects like Combat Paper—in which veterans transform their old
uniforms into handmade paper—she shows how symbolic and linguistic
acts become forms of healing and resistance. The closing Coda, “The
Nervous System,” extends this argument beyond the military, suggesting
that kill talk operates as a pervasive communicative system shaping
not only soldiers’ psyches but also civilian understandings of
violence and otherness.
Kill Talk thus investigates how everyday, ritualized speech within
military settings functions as a technology of both killing and
survival. Rather than treating military language as mere jargon,
McIntosh reveals its deeper ideological and psychological functions,
conditioning recruits, shaping wartime behavior, and influencing
postwar reintegration.
EVALUATION
Strengths
McIntosh seems to succeed in achieving her central goal: to show how
language underpins military necropolitics. She convincingly
demonstrates that speech and sound are not peripheral but integral to
how soldiers are made capable of killing, surviving, and returning to
civilian life. The structure—training → combat → aftermath—creates a
coherent narrative arc that mirrors the soldier’s journey and
strengthens the book’s argument.
The book’s ethnographic richness makes its arguments compelling.
McIntosh’s vivid descriptions of sonic violence, insult rituals, and
dark humor give readers an embodied sense of military discourse. The
theoretical synthesis—linking linguistic anthropology, necropolitics,
and trauma studies—is original and illuminating. The introduction of
semiotic callousing is a particularly valuable contribution, showing
how repeated verbal aggression reshapes recruits’ emotional and
interpretive capacities. Furthermore, her inclusion of veterans’
artistic and poetic voices adds ethical depth, portraying language not
only as an instrument of harm but also as a medium for healing.
Kill Talk will be especially valuable to scholars in linguistic
anthropology, discourse analysis, and military studies, particularly
those interested in the intersection of language, violence, and power.
It also speaks to veterans, mental health practitioners, and general
readers seeking a linguistically grounded understanding of war’s
psychological aftermath. Readers expecting quantitative data or policy
prescriptions, however, may find it less satisfying, as McIntosh’s
strength lies in qualitative insight rather than quantitative and
empirical generalization.
Limitations
The book might be considered limited in scope.  The ethnography
focuses largely on the U.S. Marine Corps, limiting the possible
generalizability of findings to other branches, roles, or national
militaries. Similarly, while McIntosh acknowledges issues of race,
gender, and class, these receive less sustained attention than they
deserve. A more intersectional analysis could have shown how
differently positioned recruits experience or resist kill talk.
In addition, representativeness could be questioned. Much of the
“after war” material centers on reflective or artistic veterans. While
their voices are compelling, this risks overlooking those who embrace
military language without critique or who lack access to expressive
outlets. It raises the question: how much of “kill talk” applies
across different units, cultures, or military traditions? Also,
experiences may differ a lot by gender, race, rank, and background.
Some of these differences are touched on, but some readers may wish
for more granular variation. For instance, how do women combatants
experience or resist “kill talk” differently? Or how do ‘minority’
soldiers, if any, navigate it?
Finally, McIntosh herself uses talk metaphorically, not just as speech
but as a system of meaning-making that includes sound, tone, and
rhythm. If we accept that, then the concept naturally expands to
non-verbal “speech acts”.  In the military, talk also happens through
ritualized gestures (salutes, marches, synchronized drills) and
silences (unquestioned obedience, stoic stillness). These are semiotic
forms of communication that “speak” discipline, hierarchy, and
readiness to kill, even without words.
The book’s focus on language, while theoretically rich, may have
downplayed the non-verbal dimensions of military discipline. Gesture,
posture, silence, and visual symbols—what Kress and van Leeuwen (2001)
call multimodal semiotics—also perform the work of kill talk.
Instructors’ glares, synchronized drills, and ritual silences
communicate power as forcefully as words. Silence itself communicates
within necropolitics. Soldiers’ silence when witnessing death, the
unspoken rules against emotional expression, or command silence about
civilian casualties — these are all forms of talk by omission. They
perpetuate the culture of dehumanization by withholding language where
empathy or critique could emerge. A broader semiotic framework,
informed by Goffman’s (1981) analysis of framing, as well as the
theory of indexicality, could extend McIntosh’s insights beyond the
verbal, showing how kill talk functions through an entire system of
signs.
Broader Significance and Future Research
Kill Talk represents a significant contribution to the study of
language, power, and violence, offering one of the most detailed
linguistic-anthropological accounts of how communicative practices
shape the moral and emotional economies of war. McIntosh demonstrates
that language is not simply descriptive but performative. It
constructs the psychological and ethical conditions under which
killing becomes possible and, later, survivable. Her concept of
semiotic callousing advances linguistic anthropology by linking
language, affect, and embodiment, showing how repeated verbal
aggression can reshape soldiers’ semiotic and emotional capacities.
The book opens multiple pathways for future research. Comparative
studies could examine how military discourse varies across national,
cultural, or institutional contexts, revealing which aspects of kill
talk are universal and which are locally produced. Further,
intersectional analyses of gender, race, and class within military
communication would illuminate how different social identities
experience or resist linguistic conditioning. Finally, the notion of
semiotic callousing offers a good ground for extension to other sites
of institutional ‘violence’, such as policing, prisons, and online
hate speech, where language similarly operates to desensitize,
dehumanize, or morally distance individuals from harm. In this way,
McIntosh’s work not only deepens the linguistic study of militarism
but also expands the scope of discourse analysis toward questions of
ethics and the politics of human vulnerability.
REFERENCES
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes
and media of contemporary communication. London, UK: Arnold
Publishers.
Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics (S. Corcoran, Trans.). Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.(Original work published 2003)
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Ifeoluwa Priscilla Awopetu is a sociolinguist whose research primarily
examines how language mediates ideology, power, and social conflict
across digital and institutional contexts. Her work explores how
people use linguistic and multimodal resources to negotiate identity,
express resistance, and construct meaning in contemporary public
discourse. She is pursuing her doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics
at the University of Memphis,USA and currently serves as the Technical
Editor of Quaesitum, the University of Memphis Undergraduate Research
Journal.



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