Linguistics in law enforcement

Modeling and Mental Practice

The old children's rhyme, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," is oddly inconsistent with the realities of human discourse, something we know all too well since the advent of neurolinguistics, the science concerned with understanding the connection between language and the brain. In fact, a neurolinguist would almost certainly contend that words can hurt much more deeply than the insult of a stick against flesh.

In fact, in terms of global law enforcement, it is abundantly clear that the use or misuse of words can not only alter the course of law enforcement, but conceivably of world history. Because of this link, it is crucial to apply linguistics to law enforcement, especially global law enforcement, and to the efforts of allied industries such as the media and legal practice. Indeed, the operative rubric in global law enforcement, especially, should move form the 'sticks and stones' paradigm to the 'What's in a name?' paradigm. It is apparent, at least to Robert Charles, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement from 2003-2005, that what we call something or someone controls our perceptions and treatment of the issue at hand or person concerned.

Charles reached his conclusion that language, used well, "offers hope. Used with evil intent, it can undermine hope, destroy honest ambition, mislead and confound both history and truth" (2005, p. A18). He notes that a primary tool of the "so-called" jihadists in Iraq (or elsewhere, for that matter) is language. Charles makes cogent arguments that redefining terms is an essential part of getting people to kill themselves and others in the name of Islam. Nothing, he contends, could be farther from the truth than calling these murderers martyrs.

The Islamic population has, by and large, accepted the appellation of martyr to describe the murderers -- helped along, one might contend, by a world press that is either complicit or woefully ignorant in continuing to misuse the term. In fact, there is a world of difference between a murderer and a martyr, Charles points out, both from a Christian and a Muslim viewpoint.

Charles uses Webster's to open the argument in favor of altering global linguistics concerning the Islamic so-called martyrs. He notes that, for Webster's, a martyr is "one who submits to death rather than forswear his faith" (quoted by Charles, 2005, p. A18).

This is a passive state of being, not an active one, bringing death and destruction to those who disagree with one.

Charles concludes that true martyrdom "embodies no aggressive act toward another, no insistence on killing, maiming, kidnapping, attacking, beheading, let alone insulting someone of different faith" (2005, p. A18).

Charles makes a prima facie case for ceasing to confuse murderers with martyrs, one that would overturn the current skewing of public perception. Indeed, insistence on calling murderers by the opposite word can do nothing but, at first, garble the neurolinguistic receptivity of the public and, when the misuse has been consistently applied over time, eventually infiltrate the brain's hardwiring until very few are able to go beyond the knee-jerk reaction to news of the 'martyrs' and contend vociferously that they be called murderers. Granted, westerners who use the term 'martyr' are probably not, still, using it as the Islamic puppet masters use it. But one might contend that the fact that they do use it, in contrast to the more accurate term of murderer, serves to soften their attitude by confusing the neural pathways that connect murder with mayhem and martyrdom with passive resistance carried out in the person of the martyr himself, and not hordes of innocent bystanders.

In fact, Charles abundantly supports his case for dissociating murderous Islamic extremists from the term martyr. He offers this empirical fact: "No Christian is viewed as a martyr or saint for having taken the life of an innocent, let alone murdering innocent children, and taking one's own life in the bargain" (2005, p. A18).

Perhaps the most egregious harm done by the neurolinguistic misuse of the term martyr accrues to the Islamic faith itself, however. Arguably, it would be difficult to find a westerner who did not equate the Koran, holy book of Islam, with violence despite a spate of disclaimers regarding that concept that has occasionally appeared in at least some publications. Charles points out that "The Koran celebrates innocence; it forswears both taking innocent life and suicide. In one section, there is a deliberate appeal to protection of noncombatants during war, while in another 'kindness' is openly encouraged toward 'unbelievers'" (2005, p. A18). It is reprehensible, then, when religious or secular leaders misinterpret the Koran to their followers, assuming Charles' translation is correct; they are using linguistics to create bedlam.

In fact, Charles contends that the term jihad is also misused, and what westerners now refer to -- based on the use of the word by the world press if not by the murderous mullahs themselves -- as a jihad originally called on individual believers in Islam to "wage and win the internal battle with evil, as in other faiths, not to export violence" (2005, p. A18).

In fact, Charles' contentions are easily checked. He contends that the Koran is unequivocal that suicide is prohibited and that, in another section, there is a commandment: Do not kill your people. He cites (but does not name) notable Islamic scholars who claim that there was a common understanding in the Muslim faith from 680 AD to at least the 1970s that in Islam, as in Christianity, martyrdom was a passive act.

The Islamic problem is simply the most riveting current example of the ways in which misuse of language alters the neurolinguistic landscape of a population, and thereby affects its response to crime and law enforcement initiatives: we are apparently 'programmed' to think more kindly of a 'martyr' supposedly protecting his or her faith than of a murderer senselessly killing the innocent in an insane "fanatical rage" as Charles puts it)

However, linguistic misdeeds color the law enforcement landscape in less abundantly clear ways as well, and has been doing so at least since 1994, when Robert Elias wrote about it for The Humanist, as it existed in U.S. government venues up until that time.

Elias told the tale of Rodney King. No matter what deeds of misdeeds King had perpetrated, when his beating by California police officers was caught on tape, there was abundant proof of excessive force being used to subdue the man. And yet, because of the continuing tough stance of the government in its attack on crime, the beating was seen as a reasonable response by many people. In the aftermath of such incidents, Congress wrote ever tougher crime bills which, Elias contends, "provided no new strategies" but instead "merely intensified what had already been tried and shown to fail: building more prisons, curbing defendants' rights, stiffening penalties, and so on. Yet despite such draconian measures, crime rates continue to rise, and the fear of crime has reached staggering levels" (1994, p. 3+).

It is, in light of information offered by Charles and Elias, the height of understatement when Elias names one section of his essay "Media amnesia and crime." He quotes I.F. Stone: "The press corps is like a pool of stenographers with amnesia"(1994, p. 3+) in attempting to explain how the press can do such things as call murders by the term martyr and an unconscionable beating 'restraint.'

Elias points out that:

Americans learn about government crime policy largely through the media. The press provides our window on public problems, on the government's strategies to solve them, and on how well those strategies succeed (or fail). If Americans were to read the criminological literature, the failure of our crime policy would be clear enough. Since most of us don't have the time or the inclination for such study, we rely upon the mass media to do it for us (1994, p. 3+).