9-11 and the United States’ Empire of Language and Ideas

Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When it was reported that al-Qaeda was preparing to launch its first online newspaper, it reminded me of what Nicholas Ostler wrote in “Empires of the Word, A Language History of the World.” (Since words and phrases, along with their meanings, are usually defined and then redefined again by empires and their hegemonic discourses, I am leaving out the propagandistic adjective “propaganda” that the New York Times placed right before the word “online”, and the phrase “a move that could help the terror group recruit inside the U.S. and Europe” which followed the word “newspaper.”) Ostler, who has spent most of his life researching languages,…

Continue reading here:

9-11 and the United States’ Empire of Language and Ideas

Posted by on September 8, 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.