词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Language of Terror, Part 2

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- more about terrorism and language.

TAPE: CUT ONE -- BUSH

"Now is the time to draw a line in the sand against the evil ones."

RS: President Bush, speaking this past week. Geoff Nunberg is a linguist¹, author and social commentator². We asked him his thoughts about hearing our leaders refer to terrorists as "evil," a word with a strong moral overtone.

TAPE: CUT TWO -- NUNBERG

"'Evil' is not a word that has been much used in the political arena³, and when it has been used, for example, when Reagan described the Soviet⁴ Union as an 'evil empire' he was jumped on by a lot of people not just on the left, but moderates, and there really hasn't been that reaction to the use of evil in this context, perhaps because people feel there really is something evil about what happened."

AA: He says a word that has drawn⁵ more attention among Americans is "homeland," as in President Bush's new Office of Homeland Security.

TAPE: CUT THREE -- NUNBERG

"Americans don't usually think of themselves as having a 'homeland' in that sense. It's like 'fatherland' in German or 'patris' in French. English and particularly American English doesn't have a word for that. We need some way to describe this part of America that's located here, and that's a very interesting usage. It has an Old World feel to it and it's not the sort of way we've thought about our country. I don't know if it augers a change in the way we think of America itself or if it's just a convenient or slightly awkward term that Bush grabbed for, but it's certainly interesting."

RS: Geoff Nunberg says that after the September eleventh attacks on the United States, politicians in particular seemed to reach back in time for their language.

TAPE: CUT FOUR -- NUNBERG/SKIRBLE

NUNBERG: "People were using the word 'nefarious⁶.' Both Senator Schumer of New York and Governor Davis of California used the word 'dastardly.' Now 'dastardly' is the kind of word that you usually associate with the villain⁷ in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. It's not a word that people ordinarily use to describe events in everyday life. Bush used the word 'despicable' which has a slightly Victorian cast to it.

"I don't know what the reason for this was, but I suspect that part of it had to do with the idea that that language -- words like 'dastardly,' 'despicable,' 'nefarious' -- is associated with a Victorian moral order where there was right and wrong. And this way of casting the problem as a battle between good and evil, for example, also had that Victorian resonance⁸. And in that sense the ideology⁹ that's implicit¹⁰ in the use of this language does reflect more a kind of Victorian ideology than a twentieth century ideology where things aren't black and white but all painted in shades of gray."

RS: "These are words coming out of the mouths of politicians. What about the people on the street? What are we hearing from them?"

NUNBERG: "Well, we're hearing two kinds of language. We're hearing very angry language, very colloquial¹¹ angry language. And we're also hearing a kind of interestingly formal language to describe -- the word 'enormity' has been used for a long time in English but tends to be used by most people now just to refer to things that are large and not things that are large and terrible, but somehow 'enormity' has re-acquired its old sense of things that are great in their horribleness and their terror. The word 'horrific' was on everyone's lips for the week following the attacks, and that again is a slightly old-fashioned word, I think. So it's as if people also are looking to the language of some earlier moral order, as if the language of ordinary English doesn't quite have the resources to deal with events of this magnitude."

AA: Sometimes, though, he says, it seems like not having the right words is just the right thing.

TAPE: CUT FIVE -- NUNBERG

"We use these words like 'unuterrable, indescribable, unspeakable. In a certain sense the most damning thing you can say about events is that they pass the powers of language to describe. It's a way of talking that was very much used in connection with the Holocaust¹², for example. That words ought to fail us."

RS: Linguist Geoff Nunberg, speaking to us from his home in San Francisco, California. He's the author of a new book about language and culture, called "The Way We Talk Now."

AA: The way to talk to us now is to send an e-mail -- our address is [email protected]. And that's all for Wordmaster this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 linguist   

n.语言学家；精通数种外国语言者

参考例句：

• I used to be a linguist till I become a writer.过去我是个语言学家，后来成了作家。
• Professor Cui has a high reputation as a linguist.崔教授作为语言学家名声很高。

2 commentator   

n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员

参考例句：

• He is a good commentator because he can get across the game.他能简单地解说这场比赛，是个好的解说者。
• The commentator made a big mistake during the live broadcast.在直播节目中评论员犯了个大错误。

3 arena   

n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台

参考例句：

• She entered the political arena at the age of 25. 她25岁进入政界。
• He had not an adequate arena for the exercise of his talents.他没有充分发挥其才能的场所。

4 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

5 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

6 nefarious   

adj.恶毒的，极坏的

参考例句：

• My father believes you all have a nefarious purpose here.我父亲认为你们都有邪恶的目的。
• He was universally feared because of his many nefarious deeds.因为他干了许多罪恶的勾当，所以人人都惧怕他。

7 villain   

n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因

参考例句：

• He was cast as the villain in the play.他在戏里扮演反面角色。
• The man who played the villain acted very well.扮演恶棍的那个男演员演得很好。

8 resonance   

n.洪亮；共鸣；共振

参考例句：

• Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments.一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。
• The areas under the two resonance envelopes are unequal.两个共振峰下面的面积是不相等的。

9 ideology   

n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识

参考例句：

• The ideology has great influence in the world.这种思想体系在世界上有很大的影响。
• The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration.我的理想是在意识思想和灵感鼓动之间找到一个折衷。

10 implicit   

a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的

参考例句：

• A soldier must give implicit obedience to his officers. 士兵必须绝对服从他的长官。
• Her silence gave implicit consent. 她的沉默表示默许。

11 colloquial   

adj.口语的，会话的

参考例句：

• It's hard to understand the colloquial idioms of a foreign language.外语里的口头习语很难懂。
• They have little acquaintance with colloquial English. 他们对英语会话几乎一窍不通。

12 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。