rhetoric
My husband & I have been talking a lot about how our refusal to participate in Extremely Online I/P discourse is connected to a) our increasing alarm about the ways in which we see litmus tests coming from non-Jews about Jewish identity, and b) the ways in which people assume universal definitions of certain words or ideas that have always been subject to intra-community debate. this piece by Zadie Smith gets at some of the discussions we’ve been having https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/shibboleth-the-role-of-words-in-the-campus-protests
rhetoric
One of the things that being a Quaker has taught me is that the seeds of war often starts in our language. It is easy to wave away concerns about rhetoric as a distraction from the real issue at hand which is the devastation of tens of thousands of deaths, but rhetoric and language is a critical part of coalition building and peacemaking. In Quaker settings we spend a LOT of time being careful with and attending to language because we know words can heal as much as they can wound.
@TeamMidwest that sounds like two potentially independent ideas, though: could it be that the seeds of war aren't so firmly in language but the seeds of peace are?
For example, war over control over a piece of territory might not have much to do with language, but language might indeed help find a peaceful resolution to the dispute?
