what do we call the war? (meme)
That magnificent Scotsman Andrew Gray has some speculation. Google news reveals the following:
"iraq conflict" - 885
"iraqi conflict" - 142
"conflict in iraq" - 1,110
"iraq war" - 23,500
"iraqi war" - 455
"war in iraq" - 18,400 (18,000 when discounting "civil war in iraq")
"war on iraq" - 929 (although those are almost all talking about 2003)
To that we should probably add:
"war on terrorism" - 7,500
"war on terror" - 1,100
"global war on terror" - 767
"GWOT" - 25
To many Americans, these terms are synonymous. Talking about Iraq will make them think "war on terror" and vice versa. So I think they need to be thrown into the mix, whether or not they're accurate. Of course, lots of these references won't have anything to do with Iraq, plus using Google as evidence in arguments is fraught with difficulties anyway.
I would like to put a historical spin on this question, though: what will the Iraq war (and the Afghanistan war, for that matter) be called 50 years from now? What variables would affect the name we (or our children) choose?
Also, someone remind me to post my essay defending the term "9/11."
"iraq conflict" - 885
"iraqi conflict" - 142
"conflict in iraq" - 1,110
"iraq war" - 23,500
"iraqi war" - 455
"war in iraq" - 18,400 (18,000 when discounting "civil war in iraq")
"war on iraq" - 929 (although those are almost all talking about 2003)
To that we should probably add:
"war on terrorism" - 7,500
"war on terror" - 1,100
"global war on terror" - 767
"GWOT" - 25
To many Americans, these terms are synonymous. Talking about Iraq will make them think "war on terror" and vice versa. So I think they need to be thrown into the mix, whether or not they're accurate. Of course, lots of these references won't have anything to do with Iraq, plus using Google as evidence in arguments is fraught with difficulties anyway.
I would like to put a historical spin on this question, though: what will the Iraq war (and the Afghanistan war, for that matter) be called 50 years from now? What variables would affect the name we (or our children) choose?
Also, someone remind me to post my essay defending the term "9/11."
posted by Andrew @ 9:53 PM
2 Comments:
At 8:49 AM,
Anonymous said…
The "what will it be called in 50 years time" thought, incidentally, was also the question brought up immediately afterwards by Noel (I should dig up the original posts for you; they're quite interesting); my money is on "the Iraq War", or "Iraq" - analogous to use of "Vietnam" - but we shall see.
A little bit of a conclusion can be drawn by considering Afghanistan - I summarised some statistics for how this is referred to in the media at the same time, and will put them up tonight. The Afghan situation is now mostly past - or, at least, the media perception of it is as a historical event - and as such we can get a handle on how the media terms an Untitled Modern War. (What was the Vietnam War called in 1964? 1968? 1972? 1976? When did the intervention in Korea become the Korean War - 1951? 1955?)
Using Google News does help assuage some of my gut worries regarding using Google as a literary corpus, although I find it hard to define why. (There's some fun writing to be done on journalistic style as a controlled vocabulary, especially since it is orthogonal to the normal reason for mandating a controlled vocabulary - to allow comprehensive searching and indexing. Hmm. Hmm hmm. But I digress...) I can see a good four or five ways to take this idea of restricting the source, and I may have an interesting evening ahead trying to work them out...
-Andrew.
At 8:26 PM,
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