Foucault's Language-Power Theory and the Red Lake Massacre

On March 21, 2005, in northeast Minnesota near the United States–Canada border, a sixteen-year-old student on home tutoring at Red Lake High School — located on the Red Lake (Chippewa Band) Native American Reservation — named Jeff Weise forced his way into the high school past a security guard. He then shot dead five teenagers, a teacher, and two other adults before turning the gun fatally on himself. Twelve others were wounded, two of them critically. Even before the rampage inside the high school, however, Weise had first gone to the home of his grandfather, a tribal policeman, and killed him. He then took guns and ammunition from his grandfather's home, which he used to commit the shooting rampage at the school.

Three newspapers (among countless others worldwide) reported the incident: (1) the Mirror; (2) the Guardian; and (3) the Sun Online. Each reported the major facts of the incident, though in each case slightly differently — emphasizing different details, placing certain details before others, and in some cases omitting details that the other papers had mentioned. This essay analyzes, using the language/power theories of the French philosopher and linguistic theorist Michel Foucault, the way each newspaper described the incident, including the similarities and differences among the three accounts and which relationships of power each article emphasizes within its own language.

The methodology used in this analysis of three separate newspaper articles about the March 21 Red Lake, Minnesota high school massacre is based on the linguistic theories of Michel Foucault, who argued that language is power — or, depending on context and circumstance, its opposite: powerlessness. Since language is always used within society, and never in a neutral way (power relationships are always implied within language usage — for example, teacher to student, subordinate to boss, friend to friend), it is those power relationships that either permit or limit meaning. In the case of these three articles, an incident is never simply "reported"; that reporting is inflected with meaning based on which aspects of an incident a newspaper or reporter chooses to emphasize, perhaps even unconsciously.

Additionally, as Foucault (1970a; 1970b; 1972; 1980) suggests, discourse — that is, language — is similar to a scientific system, or "discipline," that operates within a given social context (such as a work situation, a classroom, a written historical account, or a newspaper article). Human discourses are never free, according to Foucault, of inflected or implied meanings within those contexts. As Foucault, and later Derrida, Fairclough, and others, asserted, discourse is never merely neutral written or spoken language. Therefore, under Foucault's theory, there can be no such thing as completely neutral newspaper reporting, since the written language by which the report is made will always be inflected with meaning according to hidden — or not so hidden — relationships of language and power.

Furthermore, human discourse is designed, received, and exists within a given social context. Within the present essay, the discourses being examined exist within journalistic mass media — written language communicated from newspaper to reader. Context invariably inflects meaning, so meaning is never transparent, pure, or independent of the embedded language–power relationships that supersede discourse content. Since newspaper reporting is supposedly objective — even though it is well known that each of the respective UK newspapers examined here has its own distinct "personality" — it nevertheless enjoys a kind of authority: readers tend to believe what they are reading, since a newspaper is supposed to deliver news in exchange for its purchase price.

The reader buys the newspaper in order to be informed and believes that he or she will be reading unbiased information. However, as Foucault would argue, every newspaper contains its own inherent bias, some more visible than others, and every newspaper report will therefore be biased in terms of (1) language/power relationships at the newspaper itself, and (2) language/power relationships of what is being reported, to whom, and by whom. In the case of these three articles, what is being reported is essentially factual, but within each account the facts of the incident are also presented alongside selected details — chosen or omitted — and arranged in a particular order. Moreover, even the bare facts (the name of the shooter, the number of people killed, the location and its description) differ across the three respective articles. Foucault's was a theory of "language as power," through which information is permitted, restricted, or otherwise governed.

A complete analysis of all aspects of all three articles, using Foucault's method of close reading to ascertain all inherent language/power relationships, would be extremely lengthy and is beyond the scope of this essay. Therefore, this essay examines a portion from the beginning, the middle, and the end of each of the three newspaper articles, and then compares and contrasts them for evidence of inherent language/power relationships that might bias the reporting and/or the tone or nature of the information conveyed.

Within the first of the three articles, from the Mirror, the lead sentence is: "Killer's Question: Do you believe in God?" Since the word "killer" in this context implies a relationship of power — the killer's power vis-à-vis his unarmed victims — the killer cannot possibly be asking a neutral question under Foucault's theory. A particular answer is desired by the person being asked (who, at the time of the question, has not yet killed anyone). Since many, perhaps most, people believe in God, the use of those particular words — not only as spoken by the killer, but as the lead sentence of the article — inflects the text with identification between the reader and the victims. Readers who believe in God may feel vicariously powerless vis-à-vis the gunman, identifying from the outset with the victims. Such reporting, although attention-grabbing, does in fact exploit language–power relationships and is therefore hardly neutral. Moreover, because this is the lead sentence, the entire article is inflected with non-neutrality from the start. The reference to believing in God is then repeated within the article itself, further reinforcing the implied language/power (shooter/victim) relationship:

"TEENAGE gunman went on the rampage at his school — asking one boy: 'Do you believe in God?' before shooting him. Nazi worshipper Jeff Weise, 16, who called himself the Angel of Death, grinned as he gunned down a security guard, five pupils and a teacher before killing himself after a shootout with police." (Mirror.co.uk)

This first paragraph clearly shows the language/power relationship between the "TEENAGE" (capitalized for emphasis) student — implied to be a student by the phrase "at his school" — and his peer victim. The phrase "Nazi worshipper Jeff Weise" follows immediately. Since the shooter is a "Nazi worshipper," the implication is that the answer he would prefer from the boy being questioned would be "No." Like the article's lead sentence, the repetition of that particular question reinforces most readers' bond with the victim, while the label "Nazi worshipper" further distances the killer from his victims and from the article's readership.

These sentences lead into the second paragraph: "Fifteen pupils were injured in the spree — America's worst school massacre since Columbine High in 1999 which left 15 dead." This sentence links the Minnesota incident to the Columbine High School killings, where students were also killed by peers. The Mirror's reporting of the Minnesota incident parallels the two events: victimization of the innocent, godless neo-Nazi perpetrators, innocent God-worshipping victims. This establishes clear aggressor–victim relationships in both rampages, shifting the balance of power for readers toward: God-worshipping + anti-Nazi = good; non-God-worshipping + neo-Nazi = bad. As Foucault would argue, by reducing the shooters to the powerless position of "bad guys," they become godless, misguided, Hitler-worshipping social misfits. The failure of the school and/or social system to address their needs as misfits is never mentioned, thus maintaining the original balance of power — the implicit suggestion being that society bears no responsibility for these crimes.

According to the Mirror: "Weise was described as a loner who usually wore black and was teased by fellow pupils... his father committed suicide four years ago. His mother, who has brain injuries from [sic] a car crash, lives in a Minneapolis nursing home... Weise wrote messages expressing support for Hitler on a right-wing website." This additional information further isolates the killer from the mainstream: he was a loner, dressed atypically, came from a problem family, and admired Hitler. These characteristics, the article implies, singled him out from the beginning; therefore, like the Columbine killers, he is an anomaly within society. Since so few people share these traits, the article suggests, although the incident was tragic, society itself need not examine its own implicit role in such tragedies.

The final sentence of the article reads: "It was the second fatal school shooting in Minnesota in 18 months. Two pupils were killed at Rocori High in Cold Spring in September 2003. John Jason McLaughlin, 15 at the time, is awaiting trial." This also implies, as Foucault would argue, that perhaps there is something about Minnesota — or its teenage population in particular — that singles it out for violent crimes among peers. The responsibility, therefore, is not attributed to the powerful majority; it is attributed to a less powerful minority.

The second article, from the Guardian (March 23, 2005), begins differently:

"You could hear a girl saying, 'No. Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?'"

"Nine killings in deadly school rampage of neo-Nazi loner stun Red Lake."