By Nick Enfield
October 30, 2023 — 5.00am (The Age)
Israeli ground forces are now inside Gaza following the bombing campaign sparked by Hamas’ October 7 killing and kidnapping operation. People globally are voicing their outrage at these events, mostly taking one side or the other, and choosing their words accordingly. As weapons can be loaded, so can words. They are shaping an alarmingly polarised discourse, making solutions ever more elusive.
The BBC, for example, has stated that it will not refer to Hamas as a “terrorist group”. This has outraged some, who say that the killing of civilians in Israel by Hamas earlier this month is textbook terrorism and should be labelled as such. Similar issues arise in relation to subsequent actions of the Israeli Defence Force. Is it “genocide”? Or “exercising the right to defend oneself”?
This is another battle over words in the framing of public discourse.
The BBC explains that terrorism is “a loaded word” because it expresses disapproval. In the interests of maintaining objectivity, journalists should avoid it. At the same time, the BBC suggests it is nevertheless right to refer to the actions of Hamas as “atrocities”, to convey the facts of the matter. This is interesting because clearly “atrocity” conveys disapproval. Not all words are lightning rods for outrage.
Why do certain words matter to us so much?
One issue is factual accuracy. Were the Hamas killers in fact terrorists? Were the events in fact atrocities? The BBC’s statement suggests that only the second can be objectively determined. More than a thousand civilians were killed, cruelly and brutally. For the BBC, that this is an atrocity is objective fact, while the other description – terrorism – could not be objectively applied. To call the killings acts of terrorism, or alternatively acts of resistance, would be to introduce a subjective position, and thus take a side.
A second issue is that words can create deep offence. Some seek to suppress offensive speech to reduce harm to those who would feel offended. But many free speech advocates say otherwise. Let people use whatever words they like: terrorism, resistance, war crimes, self-defence, jihad. Why? Because we benefit from speech we don’t like. It might make us uncomfortable. It might even outrage and sicken us. But speech we dislike is good in two ways.
First, our beliefs are anti-fragile, meaning they need to be challenged and tested if they are to grow and thrive. As the philosopher Karl Popper long emphasised, our goal in debate is not to win, but to learn. For that, we must subject our beliefs to every critique and see if they still stand, see if we can improve them.
Second, to hear speech one doesn’t like is to understand what one is up against. It lets us know what people really think. We may wish that they thought otherwise, but we are better off knowing the facts about who really thinks what in our society. Words are not violence. Unlike bullets to the head, we can learn from them.
A third issue concerns the real-world consequences of letting certain labels stand. During the post-September 11 Iraq War, George W. Bush’s military was careful to label their detainees “illegal enemy combatants” rather than prisoners of war. This absolved the US government of liability for their detention and torture under the Geneva Convention. Similarly, when Bobby Sands and nine other IRA members went on their hunger strike at Maze Prison in 1981, their central demand was to be accorded “Special Category Status”, that is, to be labelled political prisoners of war and not criminals.
Finally, there is the signalling power of words. We care about words because they can signal who we are and what we stand for. If I refer to the actions of Hamas as “resistance”, you can immediately tell a lot about me: my political leaning, my view of the conflict, the likely arguments I will offer. The same is true if I refer to the actions of the IDF as “defence”. Outrage over words is often outrage over the existence of people whose views we hate.
This is the problem with language. It is perfectly suited to side-taking, to rendering things in black and white, to nudging, influencing, outraging, and above all simplifying. But reality is so much more nuanced. Our discourse should reflect this, but it is failing. We like to think that words inform us, but mostly they are off-switches for the mind. “Whose side are you on?” is the ultimate thought-terminating cliché.
We are played by language at every turn. Yes, words matter. But not nearly as much as actions. Arguing over whether terrorising and killing civilians at scale – whether by guns, knives, or bombs – is “terrorism” or “resistance”, “defence” or “genocide”, is a tragic distraction from the depth and complexity of the problems at hand.
Words mean nothing to the dead, so the first order of business is for the killing to stop.
Nick Enfield is a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney.