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Linguistic Consciousness Raising <very long>
John McCreery (JLM@TWICS.COM)
Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:45:49 +0900
Dr. Rohrlich deplores the lack of linguistic sophistication
among us. The following is intended as a bit of linguistic
consciousness-raising. First, let us consider a text. The
following paragraph is taken from a letter to the editors
of _The Utne Review_ ,Jan-Feb 96, No. 73 by reader
David W. Gerbing.
"Name calling is not argumentation. I have found that
liberals have a stereotyped, innaccurate perception of
conservatism, and your articles do nothing but
perpetuate the cliche'. I have also found that when
liberals are losing an argument, they resort to the
familiar litany of cherished names -- racist, sexist,
homophobe, fascist --without establishing the logical
threads and evidence they need to support these names.
Indeed, they often lack definition and mean nothing
more than 'I disagree with you.'"
The style of argument to which Mr. Gerbing refers is, I
trust, familiar to us all on ANTHO-L. Here, however, I am
more concerned with the rhetorical structure of the
paragraph than whether its claims are true or false.
The first line "Name calling is not argumentation" seems
self-evidently true. Its rhetorical function is to thrust
the opponent into the kindergarten while leaving the
author the high ground of careful, reasoned discussion.
Next, "I have found that _______ have a stereotyped,
innaccurate perception of _________, and your articles
do nothing but perpetuate the cliche." Here, an empirical
challenge is possible, but the magisterial tone (not unlike
the "African Transparencies" ascribed by Geertz to
Evans-Pritchard) sweeps the reader along. The opponent
is now accused not merely of childish behavior but of
cognitive error as well. Then, the clincher, "do nothing
but perpetuate the cliche." It is only a short associational
step to the pop-Freudian conclusion that the opponent
must be in the grip of some neurotic obsession.
The stage is now set for the "evidence" [sic] which
demonstrates the point. "I have also found that when
_______ are losing an argument, they resort to the
familiar litany of cherished names--_____, _____,
______, ______ -- without establishing the logical threads
and evidence they need to support these names." Name-
calling is now confirmed and associated with irrational
thought in which both logic and evidence are missing.
The conclusion can then be dismissive. "Indeed, they
often lack definition and mean nothing more than 'I
disagree with you.'" Here we return to a common
perception of the opponent easily shared by anyone who
has had a heated argument.
Considered together, the opening sentence, "Name-calling
is not argumentation" and the closing "Indeed, they often
lack definition and mean nothing more than 'I disagree
with you' " have so much inherent plausibility that the
uncritical reader swept along by the flow will find
herself shaking her head, "Yes, yes" and be nicely set up
as the letter moves on.
I observe now how productive (in a strictly linguistic
sense) this rhetorical frame is. Substituting a different
series of nouns in the blanks one can generate a infinite
series of plausible-seeming remarks.
E.g.,
"Name calling is not argumentation. I have found that
anti-feminists have a stereotyped, innaccurate
perception of feminism, and your articles do nothing but
perpetuate the cliche'. I have also found that when anti-
feminists are losing an argument, they resort to the
familiar litany of cherished names -- feminazi, bull dike,
hormonally challenged bitch --without establishing the
logical threads and evidence they need to support these
names. Indeed, they often lack definition and mean
nothing more than 'I disagree with you.'"
Or,
"Name calling is not argumentation. I have found that
feminists have a stereotyped, innaccurate perception of
the middle-aged white male, and your articles do
nothing but perpetuate the cliche'. I have also found that
when feminists are losing an argument, they resort to
the familiar litany of cherished names -- feminist-baiter,
woman-hater, cannaille, retards --without establishing
the logical threads and evidence they need to support
these names. Indeed, they often lack definition and
mean nothing more than 'I disagree with you.'"
Fortunately, this particular way of savaging an opponent,
which rises only slightly above the level of name-calling
itself, is not characteristic of all politically committed
people. To make this point as strongly as possible, I turn
now to another text by one of my favorite feminists,
Connie Reeves, in a message to MINERVA, women and
war/women and the military listserv. The context is an
on-going and heated debate about media treatment of
the death of U.S.Navy Lt. Kara Hultgreen when the
aircraft she was piloting during take-off and landing
exercises on an aircraft carrier crashed into the sea.
Early and innaccurate information about the event was
leaked to the press through a political action group
opposed to women in the military. The result was a spew
of stories in which the theme was doubt about the
ability of women to fly jet fighters. The thread is called
"F-14 Crash at Nashville" because the participants are, I
think quite properly, incensed that a subsequent crash
by a male pilot was played down and handled almost
reverentially, with press photos of the pilot holding his
young child. He, despite the fact that he was apparently
a hot-dogger who had barely escaped from a previous
crash, was treated as a young hero while Kara Hultgreen
was accused of incompetence and being promoted ahead
of her capabilities to satisfy a feminist agenda.
Connie Reeves is herself an ex-U.S. Army helicopter pilot
who retired from the Army as a Major (here my
memory is faulty, she might have been a Lt. Colonel) and
is now doing a Ph. D. in Women's History. She writes,
"Susan Barnes' posting was extremely well-written and
should certainly give anyone pause before taking any
information at face value. I'm very surprised that Trish
Beckman, former president of Women Military Aviators,
hasn't jumped on here yet. The Navy eventually cleared
Kara Hultgreen's name, essentially by saying that she
was a competent pilot and this accident could not have
been avoided.
Susan brought up one particularly good point that I
had not thought of--whether the test grades were
objective or subjective, that everyone keeps referring to.
I went through flight school myself and had completely
forgotten that grading in flight school is not objective.
Students do take written exams that are objectively
graded, but their flying exams are totally subjective.
Moreover, students are graded every day that they are
in the aircraft. And every single one of those is
subjective. Questions like: did student keep the aircraft
to within plus or minus ten degrees of assigned heading?
did student successfully find a landing area during a
practice emegency? did student remain oriented to
actual physical location on the map? etc. Daily grades
were simply a progress check on how well someone was
doing; they weren't calculated into one's total grade. But
a person could receive a "pink slip" and be sent back for
retraining into a following class, a humiliating
experience.
Actual flying exams were very stressful. You
never had an examiner that had been one of your
instructors, so it was always someone you didn't know
and who didn't know you. In the Army, in helicopters,
we had "stick buddies," and the two students would be
helping each other to fly, such as navigating or watching
the instrument panel, and one student's ability or
inability could affect the other's grade. Or, a very
unlucky student could have several instructor pilots
during a particular training phase, instead of one, which
would adversely affect that person's flying ability.
When I was in flight school, very few men did as
well as I did. I did exceptionally well on the written
exams and quite well on the flying exams. I was one of
the five honor graduates. I never got a "pink slip," and
was never sent back to retraining. Many of the men in
my class were. One man never got past soloing--he had
a fear of flying. One man got washed out after eight
months because he turned out to be colorblind. A couple
of men lost it during the instrument training phase--
they just couldn't get it.
No pilot who graduates from any flying school is
perfect. They're still human beings. And the military
and the Air Transportation Safety Board will always be
able to find pilot error in almost any accident. Somehow
or other, that pilot will have forgotten to eat breakfast
that morning, or will not have had sufficient number of
hours of sleep, or will not have noticed that the RPM had
dropped below its normal range on the last landing
(even though it wasn't harmless), etc. There has hardly
been any accident that has not had some element of pilot
error.
According to the Navy, there was no way that Kara
Hultgreen could have avoided that crash. In a
simulation of the crash, only one pilot in her squadron
was able to avoid it, out of about 9 (?) who tried it, and
that person was her commander. None of her peers,
some more experienced than her, could do so. She only
had split seconds to recognize that something was wrong,
figure out the solution, and try it. She didn't have
enough time. Time was the critical element here."
That, my friends, is serious argumentation with not one
instance of name calling. Connie picks up a point she
considers well made and adds value to it. She establishes
her bona fides, using an "I've been there" approach that
fieldworking anthropologists should find very familiar.
She reports in detail on her own experience, separates
that experience from the generalizations she draws from
it concerning the Air Transportation Safety Board, and
only then returns to the official Navy decision that,
'there was no way that Kara Hultgreen could have
avoided that crash.' Nor is Connie content, then, with a
simple appeal to authority. She explains the simulation
test in which only one of 9 (?) male pilots survived the
mechanical failures that brought Kara Hultgreen down."
[Note, too, the question mark that signals evidence she
isn't sure of.]
If Connie were willing to call herself an anthropologist
and what she's writing here anthropology, I, for one,
would be delighted to have her among us.
John McCreery
Yokohama
February 12, 1996
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