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GENOCIDE VOCABULARY IN THE NEWSPAPER “DAILY STAR”
Nomozova Farangiz Zavqiddinovna
Termez state university
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13923516
The term "genocide" has entered into practice since 1944. It is a very
specific term, referring to violent and brutal crimes committed against groups of
people or nations with an aim to eliminate and abolish them. In 1944, it is Polish
Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who made up the term genocide in his book
documenting Nazi policies of systematically destroying European Jews
(ushmm.org). Afterwards, the term “genocide” has had great influence on all the
spheres of life, psychology, national identity and of course linguistic thinking
(Gasparyan 2014:27).
Our world knows many recognized and unrecognized genocides and
discussions about them are on the political agendas of many counties. In general,
any society is not indifferent to the use of violence, and in many cases the
coverage of these events is done very carefully. In the previous chapter we have
already spoken about the great influence that media have on the societies. In
present era of globalization, the number of people in the world depends on
information and communication to remain connected with the world. The
media has an enormous impact on society in shaping the public opinion of the
masses. And this very fact is often used in order to falsify the history, distort the
historical records or present the facts from subjective viewpoint. Our aim is not
just to show historical facts or analysis; we will pay special attention to the
linguistic phenomena which are used in the texts for special purposes.
The term “Genocide” belongs to the sphere of history, but as Antoine
Laurent Lavoisier wrote in 1789 “It is impossible to dissociate language from
science or science from language, because every natural or social science always
involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based;
the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in
which the concepts are expressed” (hawaii.edu).
Despite the fact that the debates continue over what legally constitutes
genocide, The United Nations define genocide in the Article Two of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of
the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
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deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part1 ; imposing measures intended to
prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group
to another group" (en.wikipedia.org).
Our aim is not to persuade readers in which part of the world genocide
happened; we are just willing to analyze and to represent genocidal articles
which have been written in the “Daily Star” newspaper.
The “Daily Star” is a series of newspapers which are being published in a
number of countries, among them: The United Kingdom, Lebanon, Bangladesh,
and Ireland. There are some ''Daily Star's'' in the USA, for example: Arizona Daily
Star, The Daily Star (Oneonta), Daily Star (Louisiana), and so on. As it is
mentioned in their web page, ''The Daily Star carries on with the long-term
responsibility is to strengthen public opinion on how the democratic system
should work and how to sustain and nurture democratic norms effectively.'' The
''Daily Star'' is free, it enjoys freedom from any influence of political parties or
vested groups. According to their editors, they do everything to publish
important and crucial news without any fear and favour (thedailystar.net).
The newspaper speaks freely about genocide not only in their news
coverages but also in their editorials, which are written by the senior editorial
staff members.
Denisova and Pozniak distinguish specific vocabulary which is typical to the
newspaper style:
1. Special political and economic terms (apartheid, by-election);
2. Non-term political vocabulary (public, people);
3. Newspaper clichés (vital issue, well-informed sources);
4. Cliches (captains of industry, pillars of society);
5. Abbreviations (PM, NATO);
6. Neologisms (Glasnost, Gorbymania) (Denisova and Pozniak 2014:127).
The stylistically marked part of the vocabulary is classified into two major
groups: informal and formal. Since it is accepted to use formal style in the
newspapers we will try to see what groups of formal vocabulary are dominant in
our articles (en.wikipedia.org).
So in order to see words and expressions used in the articles, let’s discuss
some paragraphs. We will also try to draw parallels between the words which
are used to describe Armenian and Bangladesh Genocides.
Even if we don’t know anything about Bangladesh genocide, we can make
some assumptions taking into account the vocabulary which the author of the
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article uses. Here also we meet words which have negative connotation and
express the negative attitude towards Bengali community and Hindu people. As
we see, the adverb “systematically” is used both for describing Armenian and
Bangladesh Genocides.
In this passage the journalist uses the word
“unarmed”
in order to describe
the status of the Bengali people, as in the previous paragraphs the term
“harmful”
is utilized in order to describe the conditions of Armenians. The
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the word harmful as “of a kind likely to be
damaging” (merriam-webster.com) which shows the vulnerability of the
Armenians in that period. It is also true in the case of Bengali people who,
according to the author, were unarmed and hence, defenseless.
It is very interesting to mention that the "Daily Star" in Bangladesh often
speaks about Bangladesh Genocide, whereas the "Daily Star" in Lebanon mainly
speaks about the Armenian genocide, though this line is not strictly drawn and
many disparities can occur. Maybe the real reason of this is that as Bangladeshi
people are arguing, they witnessed genocide in 1971 and as for Lebanon, in spite
of political changes, there is still very huge Armenian community left.
Analyzing the “Daily Star” newspaper articles published both in Lebanon
and in Bangladesh, we have come to interesting conclusion, according
to
which
in the articles which cover genocidal issues, have some common vocabulary
layers (words, expressions, terms, as well as stylistic devices about which we
will speak in the next chapter) which are used in order to describe the historic
events. So here we separated some words describing Armenian and Bangladesh
genocides and draw pararells between them[23;67]:
Armenian Genocide-
starvation, thirst,
genocide
, systematic;
premeditated; centrally planned genocide,
massacre
planning and execution of
Genocide, deportation, annihilate, physical abuse,
killings,
the first large-scale
genocide, execution,
atrocities
, starvation, disease, harsh environment, mass
killings, large disaster, cleansing, mass murder, assimilation,
brutality
,
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Bangladesh Genocide
-
atrocities, genocide
,
brave, courageous, defiant,
massacres, devil, massive humanitarian crisis, brutal crime, annihilation, sexual
violence, ruthless massacre,
killings
, bloodbath, bloodiest slaughter, selective
elimination, brutal genocide, cold-blooded murder.
The highlighted words are the ones which are mostly used in the articles in
order to describe both Armenian and Bangladesh genocides, and from this
wordlist we can also conclude that in all cultures and societies the same
concepts, expressions, terms and toponyms are used for describing genocidal
events. We can make some analysis in order to find out which vocabulary groups
are often used in the “Daily Star” newspaper. It should be noted from the very
outset that it is difficult to draw a distinct line between these groups, for when
used within other register, a word may acquire a new meaning and thus enter a
different stratum.
It is also very important to note that
the
usage of these words shows that
the editorial of the newspaper is not afraid of describing historical events
correctly and accurately. Their texts often lack euphemisms, instead, editors and
journalists use adjectives that enable reader to construct an accurate and
thorough understanding of the essence of the article. The newspaper has critical
viewpoint towards those who deny genocide and often publish its own articles,
where are represented thrusts accepted by the editors and journalists.
Even in this case, we might argue, that the newspaper manages to convey
information in a clear and pure way, so that the reader can not complain about
the unanimity.
Literature:
1.
Gasparyan, S., The Armenian Genocide: A Linguocognitive Perspective.
Yerevan: Yerevan State University, 2014.
2.
Денисова О., Позняк Л., Учебно-методическое пособие по стилистике
английского языка, Иркутск: ИГЛУ, 2014,
3.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, 2006:392
4.
Marcoci, S. (2014). Some typical linguistic features of English newspaper
headlines. Linguistic and philosophical investigations. Retrieved from
https://www.questia.com/
library/journal/1P3-3332296621/some-typical-
linguistic-features-of-english-newspaper.
[Electronic
Academic
Journal].;https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007043(Ac
cessed 20.01.2017).
