A few weeks back, I wrote about the power of naming -- a reminder that the act of naming can have long term impact. Today, David Carr in the NYT provides a great example. He walks through the politics and policies involved in describing the conflict in Iraq, as well as the internal debate that accompanied them. I loved this quote from Bill Keller:
“I bristle at the way a low-grade semantic argument has become — at least among the partisan cud-chewers — a substitute for serious discussion of what’s happening in Iraq and what to do about it,” he wrote. He added, perhaps for the benefit of a columnist busy putting rubber on a bald tire, “maybe this argument is a symptom of intellectual fatigue in the punditocracy. Don’t get me wrong, obviously I believe words matter. We try to choose them carefully. Sometimes our choices cause offense.”
Keller has identified another dark side of language -- as much as stories and words have the power to draw us together, they equally can be used to split apart.