Another political non-lie

I've been hearing an awful lot about health care reform in the US this summer - even from British outlets. It's all a bit disconcerting, especially the riotous town hall meetings and the arguments that seem unmoored from the facts.

FactCheck.org has a nice piece debunking seven falsehoods related to this debate, two from proponents of reform and five from opponents.

I'm interested, though, in a claim that is linguistically interesting because it is not actually a falsehood, though it is not unambiguously true, either. That is, the claim that the United States has the best health care system in the world. I've heard this claim made several times in the past few weeks; I've also heard it decried as a lie. But the claim is not really a lie in the sense of a deliberate recitation of an untruth with the intent to deceive. I think that most people who repeat the claim sincerely believe it, and most who call it a lie sincerely believe that it is untrue. The problem may be that there is no shared definition of either best or health care system.

On one hand, some of the most cutting edge medical care has been developed at US hospitals. The first successful heart-lung transplant was performed at Stanford University Medical Center; the first mechanical heart implantation was carried out at Texas Heart Institute. In terms of individual medical treatments, the United States has been on the cutting edge. In 1979 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, famously insisted that his gallbladder disease be treated in the United States. While that may be old news, the elite still seem to come to the US for treatment: according to Marketplace radio, wealthy foreign patients spend billions of dollars at US hospitals each year.

On the other hand, 28,000 infants die in the United States each year; that's a higher infant mortality rate than Hong Kong, New Zealand, Cuba, or most of Europe. According to the 2008 CIA Fact Book, overall life expectancy in the US is about 78.1 years. That's higher than in many poorer countries in Latin America or Africa, but lower than the EU, Japan, Korea, Canada, or Israel. The US ranks about 30th in overall life expectancy among United Nations member states.

So, if best health care system means "most cutting-edge in terms of treatments available," then the US may be near the top. If it means "best society-wide outcomes," however, the US is not at the top and may actually be below average.

[UPDATE: Writing in the Washington Post on August 23, T.R. Reid calls the claim that "America has 'the finest health care' in the world" a myth, and states flatly, "We don't." He goes on to point out that society-wide outcomes are better in most "advanced" countries.

In the next paragraph, though, he suggests that the US has "the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, [and] world-class research".

You would think that I should have something clever to say about that. Hm.]

What is a "white man"?

This morning Weekend Edition Sunday featured an interesting story on the Shoshone Youth Language Apprenticeship Program being held at the University of Utah campus this summer. Toward the end of piece one learner, a young Shoshone woman, described why she decided to forget about business school and instead study linguistics.

Someone will step in. You can even bring in a white man to [run a business]. But there isn't going to be a white man who can speak your language.

This observation suggests to me two questions: What is a "white man"? And why can't one speak the Shoshone language? This posting features my reflections on the first of these questions. I'll treat the second one in a future post.

What is a white man? To most people living in US society, this seems like such a simple question that it is not even worth asking. A white person is a person who is a member of the majority white race or ethnic group. But what counts as a race or ethnic group, and who gets to decide which individuals are in one? In order to reflect on the question of who is a white man, let's think for a moment about two related questions that have come up in public discourse recently: Is Barack Obama a Black man? And, on the assumption that Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina woman, does that affect her qualifications for the Supreme Court of the United States?

Before he ever announced his intention to run for the presidency, Barack Obama had been the subject of debates over race (examples here or here). Especially during the primary campaign in Illinois in which he ran against Bobby Rush to be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US House of Representatives, numerous commentators argued over whether Obama is sufficiently Black to represent Black constituents. Various arguments centered on whether different qualities or experiences are sufficient to claiming a Black identity. These included having dark skin, having ancestors from Africa, speaking in styles associated with African American communities, or facing discrimination within US society. Some commentators suggested that even if Obama meets these criteria, he does not share a Black identity since his family was not part of the slavery experience in America.

These arguments resonate with the notions of authentication and denaturalization discussed by Bucholtz and Hall (2004) as part of the tactics of intersubjectivity. The tactics of intersubjectivity explore ways in which identity is constructed within a society. Authentication lets individuals claim an identity in part by emphasizing the "naturalness" of qualities that they share with some group. By a similar token, denaturalization denies the authenticity of such identities by suggesting that qualities are either artificial or non-essential. Identity is achieved in part through such debates.

In contrast to arguments about then-candidate Obama, no one is denying that Sonia Sotomayor has a Latina identity. What is striking in this case is the lack of argument – indeed, the lack of any notice of the identity that eight of the nine current Supreme Court justices (PDF) and all 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee share. This identity doesn't even have a commonly used name, though in bureaucratic contexts it is sometimes called "non-Hispanic White."

I have been somewhat bemused, but at the same time unquestionably irritated by questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others that either suggest or presuppose that Judge Sotomayor's decision making may be affected by her Latina identity. These questions are especially called to mind by the judge's now infamous suggestion, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Of course Judge Sotomayor's ways of thinking are affected by her life experiences. What is irritating, though, is the assumption that such effects in the context of a Latina identity comprise bias, but that no such effects exist, or at least they are not problematic, for non-Hispanic white men.

This assumption relates to the notion of markedness, originally described by Prague Circle linguists. It is also discussed by many anthropologists under the heading of transparency. To simplify a bit, the idea of markedness is that some notions are 'ordinary,' and that more particular, specific related notions get marked with more words or with other speech elements. So, for example, a male nurse is a particular, out-of-the-ordinary sort of nurse.

The assumption is that a Latina justice might have prejudices. But in contemporary US society, "non-Hispanic white male" is not a marked position. A "non-Hispanic white male justice" is, in common parlance, called a "justice." No marker, no special identity, no assumption of bias. This identity is "transparent" in the sense that it is looked right through and not seen. If one thinks logically about it, the life experiences of, say Stephen Breyer, must affect his thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors in the same way that any other human being's would. But as an unmarked "justice" those effects on him are not thought of as bias.

So, to return to my original question, what is a white man?

For most of my life, I have been a white man. I have light skin, people rarely ask me about my family history, and I don't usually face discrimination in US society. I generally thought of myself as "just white" until a few years ago, when I saw photographs of my great grandparents and my great-great grandmother. Now, I had always known that I had some Mohawk ancestry, but I had never really felt much about it. I had likewise been told that I had ancestors from Germany, England, Scotland, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, but I had never felt any particular affinity to any European nationality as a result. Yet somehow, despite a career of thinking about race, ethnicity, and identity as positionings achieved via discourse, when I saw the serious faces, the dark skin, and the long black hair of my grandparents staring out from those photographs, I felt some connection to an Indian identity. Mostly, though, what I felt was a sense of disconnection from my own grandparents. I am not an Indian. I grew up around white people, who I more or less identified with, and Lakota people, who I did not. My life experiences, the things I have done and thought, and the ways that other people have treated me have made me a white man. I know that this is not an essential fact about my being; it was not predestined to be so. Still, my own actions, the actions of people around me, and the social structure within which I live establish it: I am a white man.

Human geography and political campaigning

BLDGBLOG has a very interesting piece on the treatment of urban versus rural landscapes in US political discourse. Despite the fact that about 83% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, rural areas are frequently evoked as "authentically" American and opposed to "elite" urban areas. BLDGBLOG suggests that a political focus on "authentic" (rural) America is therefore "questionable at best."

My point here is not that we should just swap landscapes in order to be in touch with the majority of the American population – going to this city instead of to that town, visiting this urban football team instead of that rural hockey league, stopping by this popular Asian restaurant instead of that pie-filled diner (though I would be very interested to explore this hypothesis). I simply want to point out that political campaigning in the United States seems almost deliberately to take place in a landscape that no longer has genuine relevance to the majority of U.S. citizens.

It's well worth a read.

Even if the intelligence of a single person can be buffeted by framing and other bounds on rationality, this does not mean that we cannot hope for something better from the fruits of many people thinking together--that is, from the collective intelligence in institutions such as history, journalism, and science, which have been explicitly designed to overcome those limitations through open debate and the testing of hypotheses with data.
-Steven Pinker, "Block that Metaphor!" The New Republic, October 2006

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
-Agent Kay, Men in Black, 1997

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker believes that people are rational. His review of Whose Freedom? by George Lakoff argues that, contrary to Lakoff's emphasis on the form of political speech, rational human beings pay attention to the logic of ideas rather than mere language. Even when individuals don't, he suggests in the quote above, institutions such as journalism lead us back to this rational course.

Current coverage of "LipstickOnAPig-Gate" (more than 1,500 media mentions since Tuesday, according to Google News) suggests, however, that both individuals and the press as an institution are more excited by form than by rational argument.

Quiz question: Does anyone remember what logical point Obama was trying to make when he deployed this folksy idiom?

Rove, via Stewart, via Baković

Eric Baković has a post on Language Log that expands a piece from The Daily Show exploring former Republican strategist Karl Rove's defense of Sarah Palin, and his very similar critique of Tim Kaine. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, is a first-term governor and former mayor; Kaine, who was thought to be a potential Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is also a first-term governor and former mayor. Rove frames his description of the two similar resumés to make contradictory points. (My own past discussions of framing in politics are here, here, and here.)

Also interesting are the comments on the post, in which there is debate over whether language and politics is an appropriate topic for a blog treating linguistics. Note that Language Log does not explicitly address itself to anthropology or sociocultural linguistics. One might say that it treats "linguistics" in the common, post-Bloomfield / post-Chomsky sense of "the scientific description of grammar."

Defining "Human Rights" in Japan

The Japan Times (15 July 2008) features a piece by Doshisha Law School professor Colin P.A. Jones discussing a 4 June ruling by the Japanese Supreme Court (最高裁判所) on that country's Nationality Laws. In that case, the court expanded the rights of the children of Japanese fathers and non-Japanese mothers to claim Japanese citizenship. (I am unable to find a description of the case on the court's web pages, so what follows is based only on Professor Jones' piece in the Japan Times.)

Beyond the immediate substance of the court case, Professor Jones dissects a notion of 人権 jinken "human rights" that he says is apparent in the majority opinion, the dissenting opinions, and concurring opinions. According to Professor Jones' reading, "[One] of the things that all of the justices seemed to agree on was this: Japanese citizenship has great significance from the standpoint of receiving protection of fundamental human rights in Japan." This seems to suggest that human rights (人権) are granted to Japanese citizens, and not - as the name would seem to suggest - to all human beings (人).

Jones contrasts the Japanese view of human rights, in which the state mediates citizens' claims against one another, with the Anglo-American view, in which human rights are seen as limiting the power of the state over individuals.

The piece is an interesting exploration of how history and culture can affect the relationship among apparently similar ideas. Although many dictionaries translate jinken as "human rights", the two notions are far from identical within their respective legal and historical settings. This might also make a useful point from which to explore the "universality" of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this year.

[UPDATE 11/5/2008
The Japan Times notes today that the government proposed yesterday to revise Japan's Nationality Law in order to meet the Supreme Court's June 4 ruling. I note that the current Japan Times article says, "The top court declared [the previous Nationality Law] a violation of equal rights." That is, a violation equal rights, not of human rights.

On the other hand, an English translation of the Supreme Court's decision is now available. The translated decision states in part, "Japanese nationality is the qualification for being a member of the State of Japan, and it is also an important legal status that means a lot to people in order to enjoy the guarantee of fundamental human rights, obtain public positions or receive public benefits in Japan" (emphasis added).]

Political spin: not lying - but not honest

It is commonly assumed that politicians lie. While there are occasional instances of politicians saying things they know are not true with apparent intent to deceive, more often political speakers attempt to "spin," or frame a discussion in ways that favor their preferred understanding. While such statements can be dishonest, they are not necessarily lies.

A case in point are the Barrack Obama presidential campaign’s statements around the rejection of public financing, and the rival John McCain campaign’s response.

Barrack Obama is the first major-party candidate to opt out of public financing for the office of president. USA Today quotes anonymous "top [Obama] campaign aides" as justifying the action by claiming that Mr. McCain has been raising funds since March, while Mr. Obama was contesting his party’s primaries until 3 June. This is literally true, but suggests that the McCain campaign has raised more money than the Obama campaign. In fact, the opposite is true.

On the other hand, NPR quotes senior McCain adviser Charlie Black’s criticism of Mr. Obama: "He talks about participating in a new kind of politics. Just to raise as much money as you can is an old kind of politics."

But in fact, Obama is the first eligible candidate ever to opt out of the public financing system, which has only existed since 1976. In that respect, this is a new campaign practice.

That is not to argue that it is a good thing; simply that it is in fact new.

Language Ownership: Does the French language belong to France?

Praising the work of a French-speaking singer from Charlemagne, Quebec, France's current president Nicolas Sarkozy revealed an interesting attitude toward the French language. Through a complex rhetoric, Sarkozy seemed to imply that the French language is, somehow, associated almost exclusively with the state of which he has been president for just over a year.

Céline Dion was recently awarded the title of «chevalier de la Légion d'honneur» (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by Sarkozy. In a speech he gave during the event, Sarkozy made several comments about languages and nations. I haven't located a complete transcript of Sarkozy's speech but several of the comments made have been covered by media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
For instance, in Agnès Gaudet's transcription, in Quebec's Canoë news outlet (emphasis mine):

«La France vous remercie, a-t-il dit, car vous contribuez par votre succès et votre talent à faire rayonner notre langue au-delà de nos frontières, sur tous les continents, alors que la tendance partout dans le monde est de s'aplatir sur un seul modèle, une seule langue.»

My semi-literal translation:

"France thanks you, said he, because you contribute through your success and your talent to making our language radiate beyond our borders, on all continents, while the tendency everywhere in the world is to flatten ourselves out on a single model, a single language."

«Faire rayonner» is idiomatic. Its literal meaning is "to make radiate" but it usually refers to acts which "give exposure to," "increase widespread knowledge of," "expand the horizons of," or "spread the word about" some social institution. Journalists have been translating this part of the speech in different ways:

• "her talent and success has contributed to the influence of the French language outside of France's borders." (NBC Philadelphia)
  

• "France thanks her as because of her talent and success; the influence of French language has increased outside the nation’s borders." (IndiaServer)
  

• "for spreading the French language beyond their borders." (Mister-info.com)
  

In all versions, the association between the French language and the French territory (defined by national borders) remains intact. And this association triggered, for me, some thoughts on language and nationalism.
The "French=France" association seems problematic given the fact that (according to Ethnologue, among others), there are more native and second-language speakers of the French language outside of France than there are French-speakers in France. La Francophonie goes much beyond France's borders as it officially includes 68 member states and governments.
While the French language has had national recognition in France since 1539, other languages have been and are still in use through the French territory. Since the French Revolution, the expansion of the language throughout La République française's territory has been long and partly coercive (Holsti 1995, citing Hobsbawm). During the 20th Century, French has almost become the exclusive language of France with (judging from Ethnologue's statistics for France) around 85% of the French population speaking French natively. Yet, to this day, other languages still share the French national territory. Surely, France's language planning and language policies must take all of these elements into account...
Granted, Sarkozy has not said that Dion is unique in "making French radiate outside of France" or that speaking the French language is an exclusively French prerogative. In fact, the thrust of his speech seems to be that the French language should be spoken by more people, worldwide. But the implication remains that, somehow, the French language belongs to the country of France. By «notre langue» ("our language") and «nos frontières» ("our borders"), Sarkozy was referring to an imagined community which excludes more people than it includes.

It's especially interesting to note that Sarkozy situated his speech in the context of linguistic plurality. Comments about a "single model" and a "single language" seem to emanate from a fear of linguistic domination (and dominance) which goes much beyond France or La Francophonie. But other comments Sarkozy made during the same speech are more marked and specific.
For instance, Sarkozy explicitly avoids pitting French against English.
A partial transcription from France's Libération:

«Il faut comprendre que si nous sommes tellement attachés» à la langue française, «ce n’est pas par opposition à l’anglais», a dit M. Sarkozy, pour qui le «monde est plus heureux avec plusieurs langues» car «la diversité est une richesse».

My semi-literal translation:

"It must be understood that if we are so attached to the French language, it is not by opposition to English," said Mr. Sakozy, for whom the "world is happier with various languages" as "diversity is a resource."

Mister-info.com translation:

"We must understand that if we are so committed" to the French language, "we are not opposed to English," said Sarkozy, for whom the world is more pleasant with several languages "because diversity is a treasure. "

"Treasure" seems like an appropriate translation for «richesse» in this context but «richesse» also means "resource," as in «richesse naturelle» ("natural resource") and "wealth" or "richness." In a political context, «la diversité est une richesse» easily resonates with a discourse
of resource management.

Unsurprisingly, Sarkozy's speech seems to have been politically motivated at several levels. He apparently made a special effort, this time, to talk about both Quebec and Canada. According to Montreal's Le Devoir, Sarkozy has used this speech to refine his message about France's position toward both Quebec and Canada:

«Je fais partie de ces Français qui considèrent que le Québec sont nos frères et que le Canada sont nos amis. Je n'oppose pas les deux.»

Semi-literal translation:

"I am among those Frenchmen who consider that Quebec are our brothers and that Canada are our friends. I don't oppose both."

The Agence France Presse version (through Yahoo! Québec) ends by «nous avons besoin des deux» ("we need both").
Christian Rioux, in Montreal's Le Devoir has a more elaborate version, which makes more grammatical sense and seems more neutral.

«Je sais les liens très forts qu'il y a entre le Québec et la France. J'aurai l'occasion de venir très bientôt dire tout ce que je pense de cette histoire. Le Québec, c'est notre famille. Le Canada, ce sont nos amis. Et moi, je veux plus pour les deux.»

Semi-literal translation.

"I know the very strong links which exist between Quebec and France. I will have the opportunity to come very soon to tell all of what I think about this history. Quebec, it is our family. Canada, they are our friends. And me, I want more for both."

Says Rioux, in this same article from Le Devoir, a previous speech of Sarkozy's, giving equal status to both Quebec and Canada, had been received negatively. The political impetus behind his speech seemed clear to those journalists.

According to Radio-Canada and others, Dion was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 2005, before Sarkozy became the French president (May, 2007). It thus sounds like Sarkozy used a ceremony planned before his presidential mandate to make revealing statements about languages and nations.

"Terminology to define the terrorists"

According to the Associated Press, the US Homeland Security department has produced a report entitled "Terminology to define the terrorists: recommendations from American Muslims."

One of those recommendations is to avoid using the word jihad to describe the efforts of al-Qaeda and other declared enemies. Jihad, which translates as either 'holy war' or 'spiritual struggle,' is an important concept in Islam, and as the report points out, calling terrorists jihadis may serve to "unintentionally [legitimize] their actions."

My colleagues Becky Shulties and Aomar Boum point out that the debate over whether it is ever appropriate to call terrorism jihad has been an active one both among Muslim scholars and in the media - particularly at al Jazeera. (Al Jazeera Arabic uses the term al irhab "terrorism".)

While I'm somewhat uneasy with government-academic partnerships such as the Minerva Consortia (see also here), I can recommend that the military and intelligence agencies read published work on the subject. (With apologies to the many scholars whose work I have not linked to.)