Book Reviews

Abstract

War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11 Sandra Silberstein London & New York: Routledge, 2002 xv +172 pp., $16.99 This book is the first (to my knowledge) to examine the relationship between the events of 11 September 2001, and the language that arose in response to those events. For sociolinguists and pragmaticists who assume a connection between language and real experience, 9/11 provides a strong test case: a pivotal event that radically shifts our experience of ourselves and our place in the world. On 10 September, to be an American was to be omnipotent, in control and, above all, secure—rare luxuries in today's world. On 11 September, all that had vanished. If there is a close connection between language and reality, surely language should have undergone what we like to call a ‘sea change’. That is, in fact, Silberstein's thesis, as expressed in the last sentence of the book: ‘In post-9/11 America, the public discourse has been transformed’. This is a striking idea; if Silberstein can demonstrate it to the reader's satisfaction, she has achieved something of great importance. Silberstein's scope is impressive. Her first chapter considers the construction and justification of the task at hand: a War on Terrorism. How were the capitalisations justified? The next chapter looks at the President's two powerful speeches in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, on 14 and 20 September. How did those powerful rhetorical moves make Bush a true President, and indeed (as he was immediately called) a ‘war president’? The third chapter examines network and cable news treatments of 9/11 and its aftermath, commenting intelligently on both the reasonable attempts of these broadcasts to inform viewers of the culture out of which the attackers had emerged, and, more ludicrously, trying to explain mysterious places like Afghanistan without making it too hard to absorb (Peter Jennings bestriding the map). The next chapter uses conversation analysis of eyewitness accounts to examine how New York became ‘America's City’, and its mayor ‘America's Mayor’. Chapter 5 considers the compounding of patriotism and consumerism: the exhortations to go out and buy to keep America strong. Chapter 6 looks at a darker issue: American Council of Trustees and Alumni's (ACTA's) (of which Second Lady Lynne Cheney is a founding member) accusations of disloyalty against academics who dared question our innocence and virtue; and the final chapter, media attempts to explain Islam to Christian America.