{"id":17875,"date":"2011-02-04T08:03:46","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T14:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17875"},"modified":"2011-02-04T08:03:46","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T14:03:46","slug":"the-war-for-the-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17875","title":{"rendered":"The War For The Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speed Gibson is writing about immigration in this piece<\/a>. \u00a0But he trips into a much, much bigger issue:<\/p>\n

From a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial: Making the case for immigration reform. The opening paragraph exposes the manifest non-sequitur that follows:<\/p>\n

The firings of 700 immigrant workers by Chipotle Restaurants in Minnesota underscores the country’s urgent need for significant immigration reform.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are clearly not talking about 700 immigrants here. They are (alleged) illegal aliens.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Speed does what anyone who learned both debate and English does; he defines his terms, in terms of the language we all purport to understand:<\/p>\n

To review, immigration is a legal process. Those who engage it successfully are called immigrants and are granted access to the country in question. Among non-citizens, those that are not immigrants are aliens, both legal (tourists, e.g.) and illegal. To again conflate illegal aliens with actual immigrants is obvious deception and insulting to those actual immigrants. But of course liberals cannot win this argument on facts as this editorial again demonstrates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Speed’s right.<\/p>\n

And yet you will listen in vain for any such logic anywhere on the left or in the mainstream media that carries the left’s water.<\/p>\n

Because above and beyond the battle over “reforming” immigration, there is a much bigger fight going on – and the left is kicking our butts at it. \u00a0It’s the battle for the language.<\/p>\n

One of the skirmishes in that battle has been the 25 year long, largely successful battle to neutralize the terms “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien” in the media. \u00a0Both terms are actively disparaged outside overtly conservative circles; calling someone an “illegal immigrant” can run one afoul of some campus speech codes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The point being if people stop saying <\/em>illegal immigration is, well, illegal, they’ll stop thinking <\/em>it’s a crime.<\/p>\n

This sort of thing is happening throughout the English language. \u00a0I’ll be writing about it at some length in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

While the generally-accepted language will still met me do it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speed Gibson is writing about immigration in this piece. \u00a0But he trips into a much, much bigger issue: From a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial: Making the case for immigration reform. The opening paragraph exposes the manifest non-sequitur that follows: The firings of 700 immigrant workers by Chipotle Restaurants in Minnesota underscores the country’s urgent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17878,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17875\/revisions\/17878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}