When I was getting my Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, one of the major messages I learned was that words matter. Not just the words that clients use to each other, but the words the therapist uses in speaking to clients. I had always been somewhat careful in the way I phrased things, but I learned to be ultra-careful in a session, because the way something is phrased could have a surprisingly large effect on the course of the therapy.
One of the tools therapists use is something called the “reframe” (go here and scroll down a little more than halfway to find a discussion of reframing). The reframing therapist re-labels or re-interprets a behavior that has been given a negative spin by the family, in hope of changing the family’s perspective to facilitate a positive change. Reframes aren’t Pollyana-ish lies, however; to be effective, the therapist must believe they represent some form of truth.
Therapy was developed in a framework in which punitive judgments of children and other family members were the norm. Even in my childhood—not so very long ago—parents felt very free to call kids “bad” and to predict a dreadful life for them if they didn’t change their wicked ways. It was a big advance when books such as this one by Chaim Ginott came out, suggesting that parents condemn as “bad” not the child, but the behavior of the child.
A very small switch, and one that, I hasten to add, still left plenty of room for judgment, limit-setting, and the need for the child to take personal responsability and to change. What it left open as well, though, was for the child to not feel demeaned and diminished as a human being, judged incapable of change because of some inherent flaw within him/herself.
Like many things that are initially advances, in time this correction became an overcorrection. In my tiresome cohort, the Baby Boomers, many parents relinquished responsibility to guide children with a firm hand and even to condemn behavior as bad and in need of correction. In an attempt to be liked by their children, many set few limits at all on behavior.
And then the growing self-esteem movement communicated the idea that it was every child’s right to have high self-esteem no matter what his/her behavior might be. Ginott’s book wanted children to retain a certain amount of shame about their behavior rather than their basic selves but to foster a sense of optimism about improvement. But subsequent “advances” in the field jettisoned the whole notion of shame, helping to create a sense of amoral entitlement in some children no matter what their behavior.
The whole movement spread somehow to the print media, who decided it would be helpful to third-world players on the international scene to have their self-esteem raised, as well. Oh, I know the connection between this and what therapists do is tenuous, and that this behavior on the part of the MSM has many causes—especially political correctness and in some cases the idea that it’s actually the US that has the most reason to feel the emotion known as shame. But both phenomena are on the same continuum, a road our society has been traveling now for quite some time.
Thus we have articles such as the following AP story, about the recent killing of Islamist-what-have-you’s in Somali. I say “what-have-you’s” because the words used to identify the dead in the headlines are surprisingly variable.
The AP is a wire service that has grown immensely in influence because most newspapers don’t have the capability to cover stories in the Muslim world and rely on it for much, if not most, of their news on the subject. Each newspaper takes the AP story and edits it at its own discretion. Often the papers just lazily place the text in their pages intact, without changing a word. The headlines tend to have the most variety, and if you Google this particular story you will see that the titles it is given by different newspapers vary.
Often the dead are referred to as “militants” (see this from Canada, for example). Sometimes the headline doesn’t mention them at all (see this from Seattle, which calls them “militants” and “insurgents” in the AP-generated text). But the same AP article in the Houston Chronicle calls them “terrorists” in its headline. It doesn’t seem that these choices are the least bit accidental.
Then take a look at the words of the article itself. In the fifth paragraph it reads: …Vice-President Hassan Dahir Mohamoud said eight foreign militants were killed in the fighting and Somali forces were pursuing five others. But a bit further down we have an actual quote from Mohamoud, who says: We have successfully completed the operation against the terrorists who came here and we are chasing the other five. Then in the very next sentence the AP reporter does another “reframe,” and writes: …he [Mohamoud] said the total number of militants was 13.
Pleaes forgive me if I say I doubt that’s what Mohamoud actually said. Every time the man is quoted directly, he uses the unambiguous word “terrorist” to refer to the people in question.
“Militant” and “fighter” are morally neutral words that simply mean “those who are engaged in fighting.” Interestingly enough, in this Web-based definition of the word it says: Journalists often use militant as a purportedly neutral term for violent actors who do not belong to an established military.
Yes indeed, they do. We wouldn’t want terrorists to have low self-esteem, would we?
