The lies and half truths behind our words

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

Words are fascinating. The older I get the more fascinated I am with them. As I wrote that sentence I was wondering should I have written ‘by’ rather than ‘with’. And that reminds me, one day teaching German prepositions a student came late into class. 

He apologised, saying that he had slept it out. I asked him did he sleep it out or sleep it in. It turned out we had a great discussion on those small positioning words we call prepositions. Did you meet her on the bus or in the bus? 

With the current wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine there has been much discussion about war crimes, crimes against humanity and indeed, people have spoken about a just war. It has all stopped me in my tracks and I have been asking myself is war itself not a crime. 

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine the Russians refused to call it a war, instead they called it a Special Military Operation, indeed they are still calling it that. And we in the West laugh at the misnomer. Of course it’s a war with all the horrible and evil consequences of a bloody war. By calling it a Special Military Operation the Russians, at least in the early days, were attempting to make it sound less savage. 

Both Ukraine and Russia are downplaying or keeping silent about the number of soldiers killed and wounded. It is estimated the Russians have lost 120,000 and the Ukrainians 70,000.

When we learned about the Bucha massacre in the early days of the war we spoke about war crimes. Again, is war itself not a crime?

Expressions such as collateral damage, even the word casualties take the edge off the suffering. In ways it makes a desperate unimaginable situation polite. It sanitises the awfulness of it all.

Words can be mysterious. They can give meaning to things but they can also be used to hide the real meaning. Is that what propaganda is?

And then there are the oxymorons and we trip them off our tongue without the slightest embarrassment. The one that always comes to mind for me is a ‘civil war’. Surely a war is anything but civil. Other examples: ill-health, the living dead, a deafening silence, a militant pacifist.

During this current war in Palestine we are constantly hearing words that try to lessen the horror. One moment the Americans are saying they are on the side of the Israelis, the next moment they are pleading for ‘humanitarian aid’. How can you be killing people and trying to protect them at the same time.

 

Have you noticed that people are no longer dying, instead they are passing on or passing away. There is something ironic about using such an expression at a time when there is less talk about a life after death.

Why have we stopped talking about dying and death? Is it that it sounds impolite? It might not be PC? Of far less importance but really worth mentioning is the advertising trick of the ‘free gift’. A gift of its nature is free. Lastly, we are no longer passengers. We are now all customers? I’m lost for words.