Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War (review)

The war on terrorism has provided the public with a variety of terms and phrases that are used constantly by government officials and mainstream media sources. Collateral Language is a collection of 14 essays that tries to unmask how these words are being used in the lexicon of government and media officials. The editors make it quite clear in the introduction that their goal is to demonstrate that "language is a terrorist organization and we stand united against terrorism. This book is a collective of essays written to expose the tyranny of political rhetoric used to justify America's New War" (1). The editors and contributors of the book believe that the terms and phrases used by government officials and mainstream media are meant to manufacture consent that will allow the government to prosecute its war on terrorism.

The essays themselves are written by scholars who are connected to St. Lawrence University in some way and who come from a variety of academic disciplines including global studies, Spanish, and sociology among others. The terms and phrases analyzed by the essayists include: "anthrax," "blowback," "civilization versus barbarism," "cowardice," "evil," "freedom," "fundamentalism," "jihad," "justice," "targets," "terrorism," "unity," "vital interests," and "the war on_______[sic]." Each author chooses a different method of analysis of how to approach each term or phrase. Some of the authors use personal anecdotes to describe their reaction to the use of various terms. For example, Natalia Rachel Singer, in her analysis of the phrase "vital interests," spends the first part of the essay describing her reaction to her viewing of the 9/11 tragedy. In doing so, she attempts to connect her personal reaction to how the Bush administration was using the phrase "vital interests." While Singer's narrative does not help her particular essay, one of the strengths of the book is its use of narrative and anecdote to demonstrate how the authors believe that the political rhetoric used by the government and the media is tyrannical in nature.

The lay public should find this book very approachable. The essayists rarely engage in a lot of academic jargon nor do they use a lot of theoretical discussion, which allows the lay public to see an analysis of the actual usage of language by the government and media.

That being said, the book rarely engages in a rigorous academic analysis of the rhetoric being used by the government and media. The two best analyses come in the middle of the book. They are the analysis of the term "jihad" by Kenneth Church and "justice" by Erin McCarthy. Both authors attempt to couch the debate on the use of language in theoretical or historical background. Kenneth Church writes an intelligent but concise history of the term "jihad," of how it is used in a post-9/11 world, and offers plausible conclusions as to the effect it may have on the public as a whole. Erin McCarthy provides an interesting discussion comparing differing notions of justice such as retributive justice versus frontier justice, and how those notions work within a just war framework. While McCarthy is not terribly in-depth on Bush's specific uses of "justice" in his rhetoric, she does argue nicely for a debate on what kinds of conceptions of "justice" the government should be using when pursuing the war on terrorism.

Overall, the essayists do not provide a rigorous analysis of how the government and media's use of language is tyrannical. Some of the essayists spend more time on condemning past U.S. foreign policy action than on the actual use of the term in the present. For example, John Collins's analysis of the term "terrorism" spends more time discussing the historical conception of terrorism and how it has come to be used in...